Bush Administration to Appeal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act Rulings.

September 28 - - The Justice Department has notified federal judges in New York and Nebraska that its lawyers will appeal decisions that overturned the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The Justice Department already had filed an appeal of the decision by San Francisco federal Judge Phyllis Hamilton that held the law unconstitutional.

Judge Hamilton's June 1 decision specifically prohibited the Justice Department from enforcing the ban, enacted with widespread bipartisan support in Congress, at any of Planned Parenthood's 900 clinics.

In an August 26 decision, U.S. District Judge Richard C. Casey of New York also overturned the law, even though he wrote, "The Court finds that the testimony at trial and before Congress establishes that D&X [partial-birth abortion] is a gruesome, brutal, barbaric, and uncivilized medical procedure ... [and finds] credible evidence that D&X abortions subject fetuses to severe pain."

In the most recent case, U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf declared the ban unconstitutional on September 8. The appeals are to three different federal courts of appeal.

Generally speaking, the law was struck on the grounds that it did not include a "health" exception, or because the law "poses an undue burden" on a woman's "right" to an abortion.

NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson said the battle had only begun.