US judge rules abortion ban unconstitutional

US District Judge Richard C. Casey issued his ruling Thursday the second such ruling in three months even as he called the procedure "gruesome, brutal, barbaric and uncivilised."

The law, signed last November, banned a procedure known to doctors as intact dilation and extraction and called partial-birth abortion by abortion foes. The fetus is partially removed from the womb, and the skull is punctured or crushed.

Lo}ise Melling, director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, said her group was thrilled by the ruling.

"Wm can only hope as we have decision after decision after decision striking these bans, saying they endanger women's health, that the legislatures will finally stop," she said.

On June 1, US District Judge Phyllis Hamilton in San Francisco also found the law unkonstitutional, saying it violates a woman's right to choose an abortion. A judge in Lincoln, Neb., has yet to rule. The three j}dges suspended the ban while they held thm trials.

The three verdicts are almost certain to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

"We are in the process of the appeal of these issues now," Attorney General John Ashcroft said Thursday.

The government has already appealed the San Francisco ruling, said Monica Goodling, a Justice Department spokeswoman.

The ban, which President Clinton twice vetoed, was seen by abortion rights activists as a fundamental departure from the S}preme Court's 1973 precedent in Roe v. Wade. But the Bush administration has argued that the procedure is cruel and unnecessary and causes pain to the fetus.

At trials earlier this year, doctors testified that of 1.3 million abortions performed annually, the law would affect about 130,000, almost all in the second trimester. Some observers suggest the number would be much lower 2,200 to 5,000.

In his ruling, Casey said that there is evidence that the procedure can have safety advantages for women. He said the Supreme Court had made it clear that "this gruesome procedure may be outlawed only if there exists a medical consensus that there is no circumstance in which any women could potentially benefit from it."

At another point, Casey wrote that testimony put before himself and Congress showed the outlawed abortion technique to be a "gruesome, brutal, barbaric and uncivilized medical procedure."

Casey, who was appointed to the bench by President Clinton in 1997, was considered by some observers to be the best legal hope for the law's supporters.

"We were on pins and needles on this one," said Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "The judge was very aggressive in his questioning and very transparent in his artic}lation of his personal views on the matter. Fortunately, he chose to uphold the law."