Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 117.djvu/1220

 PUBLIC LAW 108–105—NOV. 5, 2003

117 STAT. 1201

Public Law 108–105 108th Congress An Act To prohibit the procedure commonly known as partial-birth abortion.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003’’. SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

The Congress finds and declares the following: (1) A moral, medical, and ethical consensus exists that the practice of performing a partial-birth abortion—an abortion in which a physician deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living, unborn child’s body until either the entire baby’s head is outside the body of the mother, or any part of the baby’s trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother and only the head remains inside the womb, for the purpose of performing an overt act (usually the puncturing of the back of the child’s skull and removing the baby’s brains) that the person knows will kill the partially delivered infant, performs this act, and then completes delivery of the dead infant—is a gruesome and inhumane procedure that is never medically necessary and should be prohibited. (2) Rather than being an abortion procedure that is embraced by the medical community, particularly among physicians who routinely perform other abortion procedures, partialbirth abortion remains a disfavored procedure that is not only unnecessary to preserve the health of the mother, but in fact poses serious risks to the long-term health of women and in some circumstances, their lives. As a result, at least 27 States banned the procedure as did the United States Congress which voted to ban the procedure during the 104th, 105th, and 106th Congresses. (3) In Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U.S. 914, 932 (2000), the United States Supreme Court opined ‘‘that significant medical authority supports the proposition that in some circumstances, [partial birth abortion] would be the safest procedure’’ for pregnant women who wish to undergo an abortion. Thus, the Court struck down the State of Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion procedures, concluding that it placed an ‘‘undue burden’’ on women seeking abortions because it failed to include an exception for partial-birth abortions deemed necessary to preserve the ‘‘health’’ of the mother.

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Nov. 5, 2003 [S. 3] Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. 18 USC 1531 note. 18 USC 1531 note.

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