[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 149 (Wednesday, October 22, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Page S13046]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION BAN ACT

  Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, I am opposed to the conference report on S. 
3, the Partial Birth Abortion Act.
  In 1973--26 years ago now--the Supreme Court affirmed for the first 
time a woman's right to choose. This landmark decision was carefully 
crafted to be both balanced and responsible while holding the rights of 
women in America paramount in reproductive decisions. It is clear that 
the underlying Santorum bill does not hold the rights of women 
paramount--instead, it infringes on those rights in the most grievous 
of circumstances.
  Indeed, S. 3 undermines basic tenets of Roe v. Wade, which maintained 
that women have a constitutional right to an abortion, but after 
viability--the time at which it first becomes realistically possible 
for fetal life to be maintained outside the women's body--States could 
ban abortions only if they also allowed exceptions for cases in which a 
woman's life or health is endangered. And the Supreme Court reaffirmed 
their support for exceptions for health of the mother just 3 years ago.
  In Stenberg vs. Carhart, a case involving the constitutionality of 
Nebraska's partial birth abortion ban statute, the Supreme Court 
invalidated the Nebraska statute because it lacks an exception for the 
performance of the D & X dilation and extraction procedure when 
necessary to protect the health of the mother, and because it imposes 
an undue burden on a woman's ability to have an abortion. This case was 
representative of 21 cases throughout the Nation. Regrettably, however, 
Senator Santorum's legislation disregards both Supreme Court decisions 
by not providing an exception for the health of the mother and 
providing only a narrowly defined life exception.
  And let there be no mistake I stand here today to reaffirm that no 
viable fetus should be aborted--by any method--unless it is absolutely 
necessary to protect the life or health of the mother. Period.
  During the Senate consideration of this bill earlier this year, I 
once again cosponsored Senator Durbin's amendment which specifies that 
postviability abortions would only be lawful if the physician 
performing the abortion and an independent physician certified in 
writing that continuation of the pregnancy would threaten the mother's 
life or risk grievous injury to her physical health. It mirrors laws 
already on the books in 41 States, including my home State of Maine, 
which ban postviability abortions while at the same time including life 
and health exceptions mandated by the Supreme Court under Roe v. Wade.
  This amendment, which was tabled during the Senate's debate, would 
have lowered the number of abortions because it bans all postviability 
abortions. S. 3, in contrast, will not prevent a single abortion. 
Sadly, it will force women to choose another potentially, more harmful 
procedure.
  Is this what we really want? To put women's health and lives at risk? 
And shouldn't these most critical decisions be left to those with 
medical training--not politicians?
  The findings in S. 3 would have you believe that this procedure is 
never necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother and that 
in fact it poses significant health risks to a woman. This is simply 
not true. Let me explain why there must be a health exception for 
``grievous physical injury'' in two circumstances.
  First, the language was to apply in those heart-wrenching cases where 
a wanted pregnancy seriously threatens the health of the mother. The 
language would allow a doctor in these tragic cases to perform an 
abortion because he or she believes it is critical to preserving the 
health of a woman facing: peripartal cardiomyopathy, a form of cardiac 
failure which is often caused by the pregnancy, which can result in 
death or untreatable heart disease; pre-eclampsia, or high blood 
pressure which is caused by a pregnancy, which can result in kidney 
failure, stroke or death; and uterine ruptures which could result in 
infertility.
  Second, the language also applied when a woman has a life-threatening 
condition which requires life-saving treatment. It applies to those 
tragic cases, for example, when a woman needs chemotherapy when 
pregnant, so the families face the terrible choice of continuing the 
pregnancy or providing life-saving treatment. These conditions include: 
breast cancer; lymphoma, which has a 50 percent mortality rate if 
untreated; and primary pulmonary hypertension, which has a 50 percent 
maternal mortality rate.
  Now, I ask my colleagues, who could seriously object under these 
circumstances?
  I cosponsored this amendment because I believed that it was a 
commonsense approach to a serious problem for American women and a 
contentious issue for the United States Congress. Unfortunately, the 
omission of this or any other exemption from this ban in cases when the 
life of the mother is threatened poses a significant and likely a 
constitutional problem, and without such an exception, I could not 
support this conference report.

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