Today the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, urging that it affirm the lower court decision striking down Nebraska's "partial-birth abortion" law as an unconstitutional ban on abortion. In opposing the state's petition for review in Stenberg v. Carhart, the Center for Reproductive Rights urges the Court not to take the case based on questions presented by Nebraska, but rather to settle the important issue of the unconstitutionality of the ban by affirming, without further argument or briefing, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruling striking down the statute.

"Nebraska's abortion ban is an unconstitutional violation of Roe v. Wade and other Supreme Court rulings that guarantee women's right to choose abortion using the safest medical methods available," said Simon Heller, Director of Litigation for the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy organization that is challenging "partial-birth abortion" bans in 14 states, including Nebraska.

The Center for Reproductive Rights' opposition to Nebraska's petition is a preview of the arguments we will make when seeking Supreme Court review of the Seventh Circuit's decision upholding the Wisconsin "partial-birth abortion" law. The Center for Reproductive Rights proposes that the "partial-birth abortion" cases may be worthy of Supreme Court review for two reasons: First, to assure the vitality of the right to privacy guaranteed by Roe and subsequent decisions; and second, to confirm that broadly written state statutes prohibiting constitutionally protected conduct cannot be rewritten by a federal court in a manner that violates the legislature's intent and fails to remedy constitutional defects.

The Seventh Circuit decision, issued on October 26, 1999, created a split in the circuits by upholding laws virtually identical to those struck down by a unanimous decision of the Eighth Circuit one month earlier. U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who is the Circuit Justice for the Seventh Circuit, has become involved in the issue, granting a stay of the Seventh Circuit decision pending a decision from the full Court to review the case. The Center for Reproductive Rights' petition to the Court is due in late January, 2000.

The Center for Reproductive Rights contends that the Seventh Circuit decision violated Supreme Court precedent by upholding an abortion restriction that lacked an exception to protect the health of the woman, leaving intact a restriction that does not serve a valid state interest of protecting maternal health and life, and failing to strike down a restriction that extends to other constitutionally protected procedures.

In its petition to the Court, the state of Nebraska has raised the conflicts between the circuit courts as a reason to take the case. However, the Center for Reproductive Rights claims the state's arguments for reviewing the law are "meritless" and should be rejected. For example, Nebraska urges the Court to take the case so to establish that the "partially-born" are entitled to the rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. Also, Nebraska seeks review as an opportunity for the Court to overturn Roe, despite the Court recently and definitively rejecting a similar argument in its 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision.