Supreme Court to Review Second Challenge to Partial-Birth Abortion Ban.

WASHINGTONHaving pre-viously agreed to hear one appeal of a federal appeals court decision striking down the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, the Supreme Court last month agreed to hear a second.

On February 21, the justices first agreed to hear an appeal by the Bush Administration of the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit based in St. Louis that declared the 2003 law unconstitutional. The expectation had been that the Court would take up the case shortly after the fall term opens in October.

However on June 19, over the Bush Administration's request that Gonzales v. Carhart be decided first, the justices agreed to hear a ruling out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit based in San Francisco, which also found the law unconstitutional in Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood.

The Solicitor General had argued there was no reason to "delay the ultimate resolution of the extraordinarily important question of the act's constitutionality" and that in significant aspects the issues raised were duplicative. But lawyers for Planned Parenthood maintained that the 9th Circuit decision was broader and provided "the most complete available record" on the statute's likely impact.

It is not known whether the High Court will hear the cases in tandem.

Generally speaking there are two broad lines of attack against the law: vagueness and undue burden. The 9th Circuit accepted the notion that Congress's definition of a partial-birth abortion is so "vague" that abortion techniques used commonly in the second trimester (such as "D&E") would also be prohibited.

By contrast, the 8th Circuit invalidated the law on the sole conclusion that ...