Legislation commonly known as Michigan’s partial birth abortion ban was ruled unconstitutional by U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood in a Sept. 12 ruling from Detroit, marking the third time that state laws restricting the practice have been struck down in court.
In her written ruling, Hood called the Definition of Live Birth Act’s language “unconstitutionally vague” and said it “places an undue burden on the woman’s rights to reproductive choice.”
Hillsdale sophomore Lynette Wilhelm, president of the Students for Life Club, was not satisfied with the judge’s reasoning.
“I guess that could be a valid reason if you thought it was a right to choose, but I don’t think it is a right to choose,” she said. “What about the rights of the child? They aren’t even given fair game because [the child’s rights] are taken away before they begin.”
State Sen. Michelle McManus, R-Lake Leelanau, the act’s original sponsor, called the ruling a “devastating blow to the people of Michigan who fought so hard to protect the unborn in the state of Michigan.”
“I believe that any sort of act of taking the life of a child is wrong and immoral and certainly this was a way to define when birth really does begin,” she said. “[The] bottom line is the legislature took action. [Now] the court is legislating and that’s not their job.”
State Rep. Bruce Caswell, R-Pittsford, also disagreed with the ruling.
“Living human beings, we recognize in our Constitution, all have equal rights,” he said. “And in terms of vagueness, no, it was not vague at all. It was very specific.”
But Wendy Wagenheim, spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, supported the decision, citing judicial precedent in defense.
“It was a Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, and it is the law of the land,” she said. “Women have a right to control their own bodies, and both their life and their health have to be considered in reproductive health care.”
Wagnheim said the act, which contains a clause exempting physicians in cases where the fetus is “being expelled from the mother’s body as a result of a spontaneous abortion” was unconstitutional because it was insufficient in exempting physicians from criminal prosecution if they helped women who had miscarriages.
The Definition of Live Birth Act was passed by a simple majority in the state Legislature after Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s veto was overridden by a public petition drive in 2004.
The act does not prohibit any specific abortion procedures, but provides a legal definition of birth so that babies partially delivered for any reason would have full legal rights as citizens. This effectively bans a common, late-term abortion procedure known as partial birth abortion, in which the fetus is partially delivered before the pregnancy is terminated.
“It’s just frustrating because obviously it was the people’s choice, not just the government’s decision,” Wilhelm said, referring to the 460,034 signatures on the ban petition, which set a state record for nonprofessional petition circulation and overrode Granholm’s veto.
Wagenheim called the ruling a “victory for all Michigan families.”
“The number of people that signed the petition was a very small percentage of the people who actually live in Michigan,” she said. “But this is a private decision that should be made by women and by doctors in private seclusion.”
The signatures represent about 9.34 percent of all the people who voted in Michigan in 2004.
Caswell said he thinks the abortion debate has moved beyond a question of whether fetuses are really human to an “intellectual battle” that will continue until both sides agree that unborn children have equal rights as citizens.
Wagenheim refused to comment on whether or not she thought fetuses were human and were entitled to equal rights.
“The right to terminate a pregnancy is the right of a woman,” she said.
“It’s extremely unfortunate that life is not considered more precious than it is,” Caswell said. “The whole essence of what we talk about with life shouldn’t just start when the baby emerges from the womb, and I guess it’s disappointing that this group of lawyers doesn’t understand that life begins at conception and should be protected from that point.”
Junior Jean Getz, who describes herself as pro-choice but not pro-abortion, said she agrees with the ban on partial birth abortion because she does not support abortions performed after a baby could survive outside of its mother’s body.
“For the most part, I agree with [the LBD Act] because it’s talking about partial birth abortions,” she said. “When [the child] can be kept alive outside of her body, it’s a ward of the state.”
Even so, Getz said she does not support restriction of most abortion procedures.
“Personally I think that abortion in general is wrong, but it’s not my place to tell other women that,” she said. “I don’t know that it’s society’s place to dictate what the general public can do to that extent. I certainly don’t think it’s Gov. Granholm’s place or anybody else’s either.”
Wilhelm disagreed.
“It shouldn’t be a decision that the mother makes,” she said. “It’s not the mother’s body.”
The act was overturned at least partially because of the Plaintiffs’ argument that it restricted other abortion procedures that occur earlier in a fetus’s development, which are protected under Roe v. Wade.
In a Sept. 15 press release, McManus urged Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox to appeal the ruling.
“I join the Michigan Catholic Conference in urging the Attorney General to appeal this decision. We cannot stand for this colossal failure of the court to uphold the rights of Michigan’s most vulnerable residents,” McManus said in the statement.
Both Caswell and McManus said for now, the legislature is waiting to see what will happen if the case is appealed.
“It’s kind of in the court proceedings now” McManus said. “I mean, we did everything we could possibly do.”
The Attorney General’s office declined comment.
Total abortions in Michigan decreased 11.1 percent from 2003 to 2004 and have dropped by 46.5 percent since 1987, according to data from Michigan Right to Life.
The full text of the Michigan Live Birth Definition Act is available at the Michigan Legislature’s Web site (www.legislature.mi.gov).