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HARRISBURG, April 23 -- In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold a federal abortion ban, state Rep. Babette Josephs, D-Phila., expressed her disappointment with the ruling.
"I am very saddened that the Supreme Court disregarded the health and civil rights of our mothers, sisters, wives and ourselves by outlawing a medically necessary procedure used to protect the life and health of pregnant women," Josephs said.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court upheld the federal so-called "partial birth" abortion law by a vote of 5-4. Josephs said this ruling will impact every state, including Pennsylvania.
She said the federal law bans an abortion procedure that is often the safest available for the woman and is used as early as the second trimester of pregnancy.
"This law interferes with what may be best for a woman's health, a decision that is best left to a physician, not a politician," Josephs said.
"In addition, the decision unravels more than 30 years of Supreme Court rulings that said women's health must be protected from dangerous laws that restrict abortion. Unfortunately I can't say that I'm surprised that this happened. Groups like NARAL and Planned Parenthood have warned the public over and over that, if re-elected, Bush would continue to chip away at a woman's reproductive freedom. We knew this was the direction the new Bush court would take and is just another clear demonstration of how extreme Bush and his court appointees really are.
"It is a clarion call to all free American citizens: if we value our traditional liberties, it is up to us to make sure that no more anti-abortion federal officials are ever elected.
"Bush has always been against women and civil rights, so I am not surprised nor shocked by the decision. The extreme anti-abortion movement has been holding this hammer over our heads for a long time, and now it has fallen -- on girls and women who are going to suffer and die for lack of safe health care. I predict that freedom-loving Americans are no more going to like this any more than they do the intrusion extremists make in end-of-life decisions like what happened with the Schiavo case in Florida. If I were an anti-abortion extremist office holder anywhere in this country, my knees would be shaking. I predict there will be no anti-extremists office holders left standing in the suburbs when we come out of the 2008 federal elections in November."
© 2006 - 2007 State Representative Babette Josephs. All Rights Reserved. 215-893-1515 | 717-787-8529