ne of the most effective weapons in the fight against legalized abortion in out country has been the expression "Partial Birth". That is not the medical description of this seldom used method of terminating a pregnancy.

Congress took the lead in 2003 and banned the procedure and last week the conservative Supreme Court ruled, by a five to four vote, to uphold the federal Partial-Birth Abortion ban. The banned method or technique has been constantly attacked by anti-abortion advocates who claim that the procedure is the same as killing newborn infants. It has been used in only 0.17 percent of American abortions.

The court's majority ignored broad medical consensus which includes the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists which believes that the ban will be harmful to women's health and interferes with medical decision-making.

Until now American women, seeking a mid-term or late-term abortion had a couple of procedures available to them. No longer. The physician could partially extract the fetus before collapsing its skull, or (and this is far more commonly the case), he could dismember the fetus in the uterus, effectively killing it before removing it.

Reading beyond the current situation this is possibly going to open the floodgates for states to chip away a Roe v Wade. It is the start of the debate that "pro life" advocates have wanted. This is a significant shift in abortion jurisprudence. Is this a decisive first step toward dismantling Roe v Wade? We don't know, but it could likely be the case.

Yet to be tested is whether the ban will make it difficult for doctors to understand what they are allowed, or not allowed to do. I'll wager that in the near future we'll learn whether the high court's "partial birth" decision is a major shift or a narrow exception.

I thought the wording of the majority was paternalistic, patronizing and archaic. They said that women may suffer "loss of esteem", and "severe depression" or "regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained.
Watch, the ruling could end up having a significant impact on the next election.