Abortion

 

Abortion attorneys fear U.S. Supreme Court ruling on dismemberment method

By Kathy Ostrowski, Legislative Director, Kansans for Life
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, all fourteen judges of Kansas’ state Court of Appeals will begin analyzing all legal briefs, pro and con, for an expedited hearing on the grisly topic of dismemberment abortions.

That includes a “friend of the court” brief submitted by Kansans for Life in support of Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt. Schmidt is appealing a lower court decision that blocked implementation of the state’s first-in-the-nation Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act.
Oral arguments are set for December 9.
Last July Shawnee County District Court Judge Larry Hendricks issued an injunction, blocking Senate Bill 95 from going in effect.
The Act bans a barbaric abortion method that tears living, well-formed unborn babies apart in their mother’s wombs.
The preliminary injunction was obtained by the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of Kansas father-daughter abortionists at the Center for Women’s Health in suburban Kansas City.
But the abortionists’ lawsuit was not filed in the federal court route that ends with the U.S. Supreme Court. The Kansas Attorney General’s legal team points out clearly in its filings that the abortionists logically should have taken that path, but instead are pursuing the state court path that ends with the state Supreme Court.

Why? Two reasons. Abortion attorneys
1. recognize this Act could well be upheld for the nation, and
2. want to, instead, carve out a state right to abortion as interpreted into the Bills of Rights section of the Kansas Constitution.

The explanation for #1 is that dismemberment method abortions were examined at some length by the U.S. Supreme Court during their deliberations on partial-birth abortions. The Court assessed both methods as “brutal.”

In its 2007 Gonzales decision, the High Court upheld a prohibition on the gruesome partial-birth method, as furthering “legitimate interests in regulating the medical profession in order to promote respect for life, including life of the unborn.”
The explanation for #2 is that the Kansas state Supreme Court has shown a decidedly pro-abortion bias over the past two decades. Abortion attorneys are attempting to take advantage of that, hoping that the Kansas Supreme Court will “discover” a right-to-abortion in the state Constitution.
Everyone knows that is what is happening. The Nov. 15 “rebuttal” filing from the Kansas Attorney General observed that

“[this suit invites] Kansas courts to take on a long rejected activist role: to change the people’s Constitution of the past 150 years in order to recognize “rights” that Plaintiffs may deem politically or morally expedient, but which an overwhelming majority of Kansans do not support.”

APPEAL COURT CONSIDERATIONS
The Kansas Court of Appeals has been asked by the Kansas Attorney General to rule on whether the lower court– that opined dismemberment abortions cannot be banned –erred in two areas:
· misstating the relevant U.S. Supreme Court findings, and
· claiming that there exists a state right to abortion.
The abortion attorneys have clearly misstated the U.S. Supreme Court—and that’s why they don’t want to end up there.

As to the claim that Kansas has a state abortion right, attorneys for the Center for Women’s Health argue that permitting abortionists to dismember living babies till they bleed to death is part of a woman’s liberty right, and a development of Kansas’ “pro-woman” history. They cite that, from its inception, Kansas gave women the right to hold property and vote in school election
How absurd is that stretch?! Unless a baby is merely property that can be dismembered/shredded in the manner that is most convenient for abortionists. However, the Supreme Court’s most recent abortion ruling of 2007 doesn’t invest abortionists with veto power over the state legislature:

“Physicians are not entitled to ignore regulations that direct them to use reasonable alternative procedures. The law need not give abortion doctors unfettered choice in the course of their medical practice, nor should it elevate their status above other physicians in the medical community.” Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124, 163

“The medical profession, furthermore, may find different and less shocking methods to abort the fetus in the second trimester, thereby accommodating legislative demand.”

There is more yet to be aired on what attorneys are claiming in “friend of the court” briefs now being digested by the Kansas appellate court

Source: NRLC News