Just days after the Bush Administration laid the groundwork to justify a federal ban on abortion, the Justice Department filed a brief in support of Ohio’s abortion ban in a challenge pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
"Day by day, President Bush is making clear that he is willing to sacrifice the health of American women to further his priority goal of eliminating the right to choose abortion," said Janet Crepps, staff attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights.
On February 4, the Justice Department filed an amicus brief with the Sixth Circuit, asking it to reverse a lower court decision striking down the abortion ban as a violation of a woman’s right to choose. The decision was based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart, which struck down a simliar abortion ban. In Carhart, the Court held that women must have the ability to choose the safest medical procedure to protect their health. Unlike the Carhart case, Ohio's criminal abortion ban included a health exception that the Court found inadequate, leading to its decision to strike down the law.
On January 31, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson announced that the agency was changing the federal definition of a child to begin at conception in a program that extends government-funded health insurance to children. Rather than extend benefits to pregnant women, as many states already do, the Bush Administration has chosen to fulfill anti-abortion groups’s top wish in this area under the guise of protecting women’s health. Giving legal rights to a fetus independent of the woman’s paves the way for a federal ban on abortion and possibly contraception.
"We favor increasing prenatal care access and eligibility for pregnant women, however giving legal rights to a fetus from the moment of conception poses a grave threat to women’s reproductive rights, including contraception and abortion," said Crepps.
