Michigan House Affirms Partial-Birth Abortion Ban
Pro-life groups in Michigan were encouraged Tuesday after the Democratic-led House voted 74-32 to hand a bill that would ban partial-birth abortions for review in the Senate.
"Today's vote is a victory for those who have spent several years working to uplift the dignity of women and the human rights of the unborn by ending the atrocity known as partial-birth abortion," Michigan Catholic Conference Vice President for Public Policy Paul A. Long said in a statement after the vote.
Although the bill is expected to coast smoothly through the Republican majority Senate, celebrations from pro-life supporters were partially muted over concerns that Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm would veto the bill. Granholm has said that should would veto the bill if exceptions were not made that would account for the health of a mother.
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An amendment allowing for the exception failed to be approved by the state legislature.
If the bill is passed, however, the measure would strengthen abortion laws in Michigan and mimic the federal ban on the practice that was approved by the Supreme Court last year.
While detractors of the bill have called the bill unnecessary because of the already existing federal ban, Republican Rep. Brian Palmer paraded the bill as an effort to bring a certain end to an inhumane procedure in which babies are partially delivered only to killed.
"Even if it is one, it's one too many," Palmer said, according to The Associated Press.
In 2003, Granholm earned the derision of pro-life groups when she vetoed a similar attempt to ban partial-birth abortions after calling it "unconstitutional."
Long of the Catholic Conference said that he hoped the 2007 ruling by the Supreme Court to uphold the federal ban on partial-birth abortions would help this year's bill pass more easily.
"[T]he Governor needs to be reminded that the United States Supreme Court, on April 18, 2007, found the federal partial birth abortion ban constitutional, thereby ensuring that measures which mirror the federal ban would be constitutional as well," he said.
"The game of playing politics with human life is beyond tiresome and must end for the sake of the most vulnerable among us – the unborn," he concluded.
Since 1973, when the Supreme Court made its ruling in Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion throughout the United States, nearly 50 million babies have been aborted.
