Another small victory in the struggle

Ruling in San Francisco on a suit brought by Planned Parenthood, Federal District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton earlier today threw out the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act as unconstitutional, saying it "poses an undue burden on a woman's right to choose an abortion."

The law, signed in November, banned a procedure called intact dilation and extraction, in which the fetus is partially removed from the womb and its skull punctured. With its typical eye to deceptive rhetoric, opponents insist on calling it "partial-birth abortion." But of course there is no "birth" in any meaningful sense of the term; it is rather, as doctors will point out, a different means of removing the fetus.

Opponents also argue that the procedure is cruel because of the pain the fetus supposedly suffers in the course of the procedure. But there is no evidence the fetus feels pain; in fact, since the brain is the last part to fully develop, it's at most unlikely. The judge, however, refused to get bogged down in that debate, ruling that because of the primacy of the right to choose, it's legally "irrelevant" whether a fetus feels pain or not.

Neither did she put up with a government lawyer's argument that it "blurs the line of abortion and infanticide," calling that "grossly misleading and inaccurate."

The decision affects some 900 Planned Parenthood clinics across the country. The case is one of three suits brought against the law; the others, in New York and Nebraska, are expected to be ruled on soon. No matter the outcomes, the matter is likely to be dropped in the lap of the Supreme Court.