Bush already asking SCOTUS to attack abortion

Text WASHINGTON — Bush administration lawyers asked the Supreme Court on Monday to reinstate the first federal law banning a late-term abortion procedure, arguing that it should be outlawed because it is gruesome and is “never medically indicated” as a safer surgical procedure.

The government’s appeal asks the high court to overturn the decision of a U.S. appeals court in St. Louis, which struck down the law as unconstitutional.

It came on the same day the Senate took up the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. for chief justice of the United States. If, as expected, Roberts is confirmed this week, his court could put new limits on abortion during its first term, which begins Monday.

The dispute over this type of procedure — known medically as intact dilation and extraction and called “partial-birth abortion” by critics — amounts to a rerun of a case heard five years ago by the high court. However, the outcome is in doubt this time because the makeup of the court is changing.

In 2000, the justices ruled 5 to 4 to strike down a Nebraska law that made it a crime for a doctor to remove much of a fetus intact during a midterm abortion. This procedure is used by some doctors who perform abortions in the fifth or sixth month of a pregnancy.

In the past, the Supreme Court had said that women could choose to end their pregnancies until the time a fetus could live on its own, which occurs after the sixth month. These later-term abortions are more complicated and only a few doctors perform them.