Talk:Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act

message: "There may be no known precedent"?  Either there is or there isn't, right? Or is there a contested precedent? --Danny Rathjens 04:18, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: There may be no known precedent

message: What  does "...partial-birth abortion made in or affecting interstate commerce." actually mean? Can abortions be made in interstate commerce? Please try to be less opaque about this in the intro.
Peter Isotalo 7 July 2005 19:48 (UTC)
*While I agree that the statement is vague, it actually follows the language of the Act itself fairly closely.  Read the first sentence of the statute, I think it explains why the phrase is in the intro to this article.  - Jersyko talk 16:50, September 11, 2005 (UTC)
*The commerce clause, is a figleaf of constitutional justification for any Federal action that is not one of its enumerated powers.  As long as Roe v Wade stands, laws that limit it must have this excuse.  It is tenuous, based a decision about five years ago against a federal law limiting the sale of drugs (or was it the use of guns) near schools.  That decision said that the commerce clause must really be about interstate commerce, not a tenuous affect on it.  Based on this precident, Partial Birth would also be struck down. Arodb 18:20, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Funny how a tenuous judicidial decision is fought by tenuously constitutional laws. I think you are referring to the case in United States v. Lopez which deals with guns. However, that was a very simple case for the justices to decide given that they all adhered to well-defined ideologies regarding federalism. Gonzales v. Raich was a bit more subtle and so would this case be on commerce clause grounds. However, there would unquestionably be a majority which would uphold the Act on that basis. ~ Rollo44 04:19, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: ...in or affecting interstate commerce.

message: This article uses the religioustolerance.org website as either a reference or a link. Please see the discussion on Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Religioustolerance.org and Wikipedia:Verifiability/Religioustolerance.org as to whether Wikipedia should cite the religioustolerance.org website, jguk 14:09, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If it does then it should also link the National Right to Life Council's PBA page. --Nerd42 (talk) 18:04, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Religioustolerance.org

message: I find a few lines in this article that seem to try to lean the article to the government's side. It reads like a White House brief. For example, take a look at this line:
*The PBA ban enjoyed the support of the American Medical Association and large majorities of the American public.
Large majorities of the American public? Who can neutraly and specifically say that the act was supported by large majorities? My main problem with that line will be the word majorities because no one can certaintly say if large majorites of americans support such act. It seems rather POVish to me.<<Coburn_Pharr>> 12:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Neutrality of this article

message: The US is a Representative Democracy. That fact indicates that if a majority of our elected representatives vote in favor of a PBA, then by extension, a majority of the people are in favor of it. This is, of course, until such time that new representatives are elected and the law is either changed or amended to reverse the ban. Then the majority would be against it....
- --Drocque 02:02, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And then whoever controls the technology controls the country? You'd have to make it open and transparent enough to allow the masses to see that it works fairly, and yet protected enough to prevent hacking.  How would such a system work?  Applejuicefool 17:55, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Large Majorities"

message: Isn't it rather pointless having the entire content of the divisions posted here - especially without any linkies?    If this information is really needed, could we prune this down to a list of Democrats who voted for, and Republicans who voted against?   Morwen - Talk 17:15, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Divisions

message: Seems to me that the text from the 1995 act could easily be included in the article on PBABA of 2003 -- maybe in a History section
:I would support a merge, but perhaps we'd need to change the intro to say something like "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act refers to two different pieces of legislation introduced in the US Congrass, the first in 1995, and the second in 2003. etc"--Andrew c 04:24, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge with Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1995

message: The intro states that the bill "does not apply to a partial-birth abortion that is necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself." But the "Status of the law" part has several mention of there being no health exception. --219.74.97.2 06:02, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've edited the article to make it clearer, for example by adding some words at the end of this sentence: "Objections to this statute are primarily because there is no exemption if the health of a woman is at risk, unless the woman's life is threatened."Ferrylodge 09:20, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

text: So there is a life exception, but not a health exception, and this difference is considered to be significant.-Andrew c 01:41, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Is there a health exception?

message: Recently, the following sentence was inserted or reinserted into the first paragraph: "The medical community does not recognize the term 'partial birth abortion' as an actual medical term or procedure."  When I first spotted this reinsertion, it seemed like it warranted at least a footnote, since the "medical community" rarely has a single monolithic view about anything.
Upon further research, I really think that this quoted sentence should either be modified or removed, for several reasons.  First of all, it's unclear whether or not this quoted sentence is referring to the word PBA as defined in the federal statute.  The definition of PBA in the statute may provide specificity that was not previously provided in the Nebraska statute.  The Solicitor General argued to the Supreme Court in November as follows: "[T]his statute, unlike the Nebraska statute, clearly uses an anatomical landmark approach that is based in the text of the statute and clearly distinguishes between the D&E procedure on one hand and the D&X procedure on the other hand."  So, it's by no means certain that the entire medical community rejects the federal statutory definition.  This is one of the issues in the case of Gonzales v. Carhart.
Additionally, even if the reinserted sentence is talking about PBA severed from its federal statutory definition, still there is some authority that at least part of the medical community recognizes it as a valid term.  See Gynecologic, Obstetric, and Related Surgery, at 1043; Sprang & Neerhof, Rationale for Banning Abortions Late in Pregnancy, 280 JAMA 744 (Aug. 26, 1998); Bopp & Cook, Partial Birth Abortion: The Final Frontier of Abortion Jurisprudence, 14 Issues in Law and Medicine 3 (1998).
So, I think the reinserted sentence ought to be removed, or maybe it could be rephrased and put into the body of this Wikipedia article.Ferrylodge 06:20, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: The medical community and the term PBA

message: As I quoted in my edit summary, Try to avoid linking to multiple pages from the same website; instead, try to find an appropriate linking page within the site. There is a link to NRLC's "linking page" on the topic of PBA. And then there is a link to one specific article found on that linking page. There is no need for two links from the same cite (when we only have 5 external links to begin with), when the second link can easily be accessed from the first "linking page". Does CouldBeeWorse care to explain why we need 2 links from the same source (and one of the links can be accessed from the other), when the WP:EL guidelines suggest otherwise?-Andrew c 03:19, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The Human Life Review is not an NRLC publication. Yes, the HLR article in question is one of at least 135 separate of documents relating to "partial-birth abortion" that are linked or archived on the NRLC's extensive archive on this issue.  It is, as far as I can tell, the only one of those 135 documents that contains extensive verbatim quotes from the actual federal trials on the subject of the Wikipedia article, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, so I think the direct link is warranted.  It would be theoretically possible for somebody who already knew exactly what they were looking for to reach a copy of the article via the NRLC archive, or via Google or other routes I suppose, but that does not make the link redundant here superfluous, because few if any would find or even know about the journal article without the direct link.CouldBeeWorse 03:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: All 3 of these cases are cited directly in the footnotes. Therefore the "extensive verbatim quotes from actual federal trials" are clearly available to readers. I see no reason to single out one pro-life analysis out of a group of 135. Again, because this file is hosted by NRLC, it is better to link to a broader links page, per the EL guidelines. -Andrew c 06:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree Nil Einne 10:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: WP:EL and NRLC

message: The penalties are mentioned at the top of the article, but I feel the discussion of the penalties should be expanded, perhaps farther down in the article.
The penalties for this law are severe:
for the doctor, up to two years imprisonment and a fine
for the doctor, liability for civil prosecution, with trebel damages, and physical and psychological injury damages, with a wide variety of family members and guardians that can bring suit against the doctor.
There's currently no mention of the civil liabilities section in the article.
The law claims the procedures are permissible to save the life of the woman, but it seems to define this as, go ahead and perform the procedure, and you can then justify the facts of the case to your state medical review board.
There are no penalties for the woman, this also isn't mentioned. How best would an expanded penalties section fit into the article flow? Dbackeberg 14:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that a penalty of violation section should be added somewhere on this is page on a law. In fact, I'd use recomending using much of the factual content in the above but without the commentary. As for placement, check other criminal law pages on the site and see if there's a normal place in these articles. Somewhere the article should also state all the exceptions listed in the text of the law itself. But there's no need to try to list what the law doesn't cover, there's an infinate list of things not in the law. Jon 21:36, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the penalties should be detailed.  Therefore, I have inserted the following into the first paragraph of the article: "Under this law, 'Any physician who, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, knowingly performs a partial-birth abortion and thereby kills a human fetus shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.'"  Not much else to say about penalties, is there?Ferrylodge 04:07, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Links are provided for details about the positions of both organizations.  There are lots and lots and lots of other organizations that took positions on this legislation, and so I think we'd have to start mentioning them too, if we decide to put in more details about ACOG and AAPLOG.Ferrylodge 04:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Penalties for violation

message: The section on the federal legal definition has just been considerably expanded.  This section now includes etymological and definitional material that is not directly related to the federal statute.  
These etymological and definitional issues are already covered in the article on Intact dilation and extraction; if there's a need to include some or all of that stuff here in this article, then it could just be copied, instead of starting this whole controversy from square one.  Can't we just keep this controversy at one article, instead of having some kind of Content Forking here?Ferrylodge 22:17, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm a little confused. I came to talk to see what you had to say before I looked at your changed. I read this and thought "yeah, I guess we don't need to go into that much detail about what happened before the PBA Ban Act. I just think it's important to mention that PBA has multiple legal definitions". So then I went to check out your changes, and you kept all of the stuff dealing with pre-PBA Ban Act legislation, but deleted the criticisms of the actual act in question. I can understand removing things that are off topic (i.e. pre-2003), but removing one of the reasons why the plaintiffs sued to try and get the Ban Act ruled unconstitutional makes no sense to me. And I also see that you removed that the AMA and the ACOG do not consider PBA to be a medical term. The version before my changes made reference to the ACOG view. So why were they removed now, but not before?-Andrew c 23:03, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The version before your changes did not say anything about the AMA or ACOG not believing that PBA is a "medical term."  I think this whole controversy about what the AMA and ACOG think (or thought) is treated well and fully at the article on Intact dilation and extraction.Ferrylodge 03:22, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Expansion of "Defined by Law" Section

message: An anonymous person recently deleted some info about reasons for late abortions.  The edit summary said: "I deleted the explanation of reasons why women would have this procedure, as it is NEVER done out of convenience or due to not wanting a child, and to imply otherwise is inflammatory."  The deleted material is as follows:
There are two wikilinks here, and there has been no assertion that either one of them contains inaccurate or irrelevant information.  Both of these wikilinks seem to contain accurate and relevant information.  Therefore, I'll revert the edit, and would encourage further discussion and explanation.Ferrylodge 01:18, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Reasons

message: I have changed the title of the last section from "Effect" to the more meaningful title "Clinical response".  The section describes the response to the PBA Ban by clinicians, who now induce fetal demise before beginning any late-term abortion procedure in order to avoid violating the ban, which only bans the procedure if it is done on LIVING fetuses.  I have also updated the section with more info on how fetal demise is induced, and with a reference to a medical review article on the subject.  Goblinshark17 (talk) 07:56, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: "Effect" section is now "Clinical response" section

message: The killing of the fetus is a secondary step to induction & c-section in partial birth abortions of viable fetuses.  The killing of the fetus, such as by jamming scissors or a scalpel in its head, is not medically necessary for the health of the mother.  Therefore partial birth abortions cannot be medically necessary under any circumstance.  Hence the medical exception clause being left out of the ban and yet Supreme Court upheld it. 
 Induce or c-section and that's it, then the baby is in the custody of the state.  That's often lost in the discussions about the ban.  It does not stop induction or c-section for whatever reason at whatever date and there's a push now to make sure the baby becomes a ward of the state.  Now they are making sure hospitals comply and don't start engaging in euthanasia or neglect.
2605:A000:1301:8B09:A5F2:18A9:3613:A902 (talk) 03:19, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Needs something on the new trend in law for just induction and the state's responsibility for the baby vs abortion