Suit was filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Richmond challenging Virginia’s new law banning partial birth infanticide from going into effect on July 1, 2003.

“The notion that Virginia’s law to ban partial birth infanticide would also ban common obstetrical procedures is absurd,” stated Eileen Roberts, Virginia Society for Human Life Executive Director. 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.

The Virginia law defines “partial birth infanticide” as any deliberate act that is intended to kill a human infant who has been born alive, but who has not been completely extracted or expelled from its mother and does kill such infant. There is never a health reason to kill a baby in the process of being born. Any health exception renders the partial birth infanticide ban meaningless.

“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,” continued Mrs. Roberts.

The Virginia Society for Human Life was founded in 1967 and is the Virginia affiliate of National Right to Life Committee, the nation's largest pro-life organization.