The ban on partial-birth infanticide passed by the Virginia General Assembly in April had only been in effect for a few hours when Federal Judge Richard Williams granted a preliminary injunction on July 1 preventing enforcement of the law. The injunction had been requested in a motion filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights, a pro-abortion law firm in New York.

The following day, Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore issued a statement saying that he had decided to pursue an immediate appeal to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. “This law defines in a reasonable way when a live birth occurs, and Virginia is fully within her rights to enact it,” said the Attorney General. “We are talking about a child that has all but been born — and is within inches of taking her first breath. There is no medical reason why a child who has been substantially born must be killed in order to protect the woman’s health. The law is clearly constitutional.”

In its law suit, the Center for Reproductive Rights claimed that the new law conflicts with the 2000 U.S. Supreme Court decision Stenberg v. Carhart which struck down the Nebraska partial-birth abortion ban. The challenge claims that the ban is vaguely defined and the law has no exception when the mother’s health is in danger.

“The notion that Virginia’s law to ban partial birth infanticide would also ban common obstetrical procedures is absurd,” responded VSHL Executive Director Eileen Roberts. “The language defining partial-birth infanticide is quite specific in the physical description of the birthing process when a child can no longer be killed.”

Specifically, the law says that birth occurs, in the case of a head first presentation, when the infant’s entire head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech presentation, when any part of the infant’s trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother. Killing the baby after this point is infanticide.

And what sense is there in a health exception for infanticide?

The Attorney General stated, “I will leave no stone unturned in defense of this law.”

“Attorney General Jerry Kilgore is to be commended for maintaining his strong leadership role in defending the Virginia law which protects the child in the process of birth, from being killed,” said Mrs. Roberts.

Published in VSHL Lifesaver, August 2003