Bush signs Partial-Birth Abortion Ban: legal challenges underway.(News)

With the president's signature, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 became law on Nov. 5. Within days, three judges had signed limited temporary restraining orders on the law.

Many physicians now wonder whether the law's language could apply to a larger scope of abortion procedures. "I don't think anybody knows what the effect of this law will be," said Dr. Warren Hern, director of the Boulder (Colo.) Abortion Clinic.

For starters, "partial-birth abortion" is more of a political term than a medical one.

Although the law includes a definition of the partial-birth abortion procedure, most physician groups define partial-birth abortion as intact dilation and extraction (intact D&X or D&X), which is a variation of the more common midterm abortion procedure known as dilatation and evacuation (D&E).

The law defines partial-birth abortion as occurring when a physician "deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of the breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother, for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus."

The law does not reference gestational age. Under the law, a physician who performs a partial-birth abortion can be fined, imprisoned for up to 2 years, or both. The penalties do not apply when the procedure is necessary to save the lire of the mother, but there is no exception made for the health of the mother.

President Bush said that passage of the bill does not mean a total ban on abortions is on the way. "I don't think the culture has changed to the extent that the American people or the Congress would totally ban abortions," he said at a news conference.