This is an update from the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) in Washington, D.C., issued Friday, September 12, 2003.

WASHINGTON (Sept. 12, 2002) -- The U.S. Senate will vote during the week of September 15 on sending the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act to a conference committee -- one of the final steps before the bill will be sent to President Bush for his signature.

The bill represents the first direct national restriction on any method of abortion since the Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand in 1973. President Bush urged Congress to pass the ban in his January 28 State of the Union speech. A January Gallup poll found that 70 percent of the public favors the ban.

The prime sponsors of the bill are Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Congressman Steve Chabot (R-Ohio).

The Senate gave initial approval to the bill (S. 3) on March 13, 64-33, but first attached an amendment (the Harkin Amendment) expressing approval of Roe v. Wade. On June 4, the House passed the bill, 282-139, but without the Harkin Amendment. The House immediately requested a conference committee to resolve the difference. Ordinarily such requests to go to conference are readily agreed to, but in this case some Senate Democrats insisted on further debate and a formal vote on the motion to go to conference, and this has resulted in some delay. Pro-life senators will support the motion to go to conference. It is expected that the conference committee will drop the Harkin Amendment and report back the clean Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which will be brought before the Senate and House for final approval votes in the near future.

Further details on recent developments on this legislation are provided in a memo titled "Recent Developments on Partial-Birth Abortion," here: www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/PartialBirthAbortionRecentDevelopments.html.

NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson commented, "President Bush, 70 percent of the public, and four Supreme Court justices say there is no constitutional right to deliver most of a living baby and then puncture her head with a scissors. But in the Stenberg v. Carhart ruling in 2000, five Supreme Court justices said that Roe v. Wade guarantees an abortionist's right to perform a partial-birth abortion whenever he chooses. We hope that by the time this ban reaches the Supreme Court, at least five justices will be willing to reject such extremism in defense of abortion."

WHAT THE BILL DOES: REALITY AND MYTHOLOGY

"Partial-birth abortion" is a legal term of art, contained in the congressional legislation (and in laws enacted in more than half the states, although these law currently are not being enforced because of the 2000 Supreme Court opinion). It is erroneous to equate the method banned by the bill with any of a number of pseudo-medical terms that have been coined by abortion providers in recent years, some of which clearly apply to some procedures not banned by the bill, and others of which would exclude some abortions banned by the bill. For details, see, "Call It Partial-Birth Abortion -- It's the Law!," at www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/CallItPBA.pdf.

Recently, some journalists have resurrected the myth that partial-birth abortions are performed mostly or only in cases in which the baby has profound disorders or the mother faces a dire physical threat -- even though such claims were thoroughly discredited in 1996 and 1997 by investigative journalists and by the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, among others. In truth, the method is used thousands of times annually, and the vast majority of partial-birth abortions are performed on healthy mothers of healthy babies. For details and links to documentation, see "Discredited Myths About Partial-Birth Abortion -- and Some Journalists Who Won't Give Them Up."

The NRLC website contains the most extensive archive of documentation on partial-birth abortion available anywhere on the internet, including documentation on all disputed issues surrounding partial-birth abortion, White House statements on the issue, groundbreaking reports by investigative journalists for major newspapers and periodicals, and expert-certified color illustrations of the method, all at www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/index.html.

The color illustrations of the partial-birth abortion method that were displayed on the Senate and House floors during the debates this year, along with documentation of their accuracy by eminent medical authorities, are here: www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/PBA_Images/PBA_Images_Heathers_Place.htm.

A basic resource, "Key Facts on Partial-Birth Abortion," is posted here: www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/keyfactsPBA.htm.

The NRLC archive also contains NRLC's in-depth testimony presented to Congress, with citations to primary sources: www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/test.html.

The National Right to Life Committee is the nation's major pro-life organization, representing affiliates in all 50 states.

VSHL is the Virginia affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee.