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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (March 30, 2004)
BECOME AN EGG DONOR I he Fertility Center ol Oregon has helped many couples achieve pregnancy since 1978. We are in need of egg donors to continue to help infertile women, Procedures are done in a pleasant local environment over a period of only six weeks, and donors are compensated $2,500 lor their time. 11 you are a healthy woman age 21-31 and are interested call 683-1559, or visit our website at www.WomensC.are.com. !_______ OF OREGON Get Ready for Summer. Plan Your Classes Now! The I/O Summer Session Catalog with Schedule of Classes is available on campus. It’s free. Summer session starts June 21. Group-satisfying and elective courses, seminars, and workshops begin throughout the summer. The 2004 UO Summer Session Catalog is here! Book Your Summer in Oregon The University of Oregon is an equal-opportunity, affirmative-action institution comn http://uosummer.uoregon.edu Read it online, or pick up a free copy today in the Summer Session office, 333 Oregon Hall, or at the UO Bookstore Telephone (541) 346-3475 o UNIVERSITY OF OREGON itted to cultural diversity and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Three federal appeals courts hear late-term abortion cases Proceedings are under way in New York, San Francisco and Lincoln, Neb. in cases against the sweeping ban By E.A. Torriero Chicago Tribune (KRT) LINCOLN, Neb. — Judges in three venues across the nation Monday be gan hearing the first legal challenges to a new federal law banning certain types of abortions. The cases in federal courts in New York, San Francisco and Lincoln, Neb., brought by physicians who per form abortions and abortion-rights groups, center mostly on what some lawmakers define as "partial-birth abortion" and what doctors call "in tart dilation and extraction" or D&X. Congress passed a prohibition on such procedures that President Bush signed into law in November. It is the most sweeping legal action on the matter since the Roe vs. Wade ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court legalized a woman's right to abortion in 1973. Opponents claimed in courtrooms Monday that the law is not specific and does not take a woman's health into account when deciding the necessity of the procedure. Government lawyers ar gued that the procedure is not only un necessary but also inhumane In the procedure, usually done in the second trimester and occasionally in the third, a fetus is partially brought out of the womb and its skull is de flated. An estimated 2,200 to 5,000 such terminations are performed an nually in the United States, out of 1.3 million total abortions. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar Nebraska law in 2000. On Monday, Nebraska physician LeRoy Carhart, who fought his state law, was again in the same Lincoln courthouse, this time as a plaintiff against the federal government. "The fight continues," he said after the government and abortion-rights attorneys presented their opening arguments before U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kopf. The ban, carrying a maximum 2 year prison term for doctors convict ed of performing the procedure, is on hold pending legal actions. Activists chose to challenge the law in three symbolic venues from coast to-coast. Along with several doctors, the National Abortion Federation is spearheading the challenge in New York, the Planned Parenthood Federa tion of America and others brought the San Francisco case, and Carhart along with the Center for Reproduc tive Rights is in court in Lincoln. Because of the long legal battle waged in Nebraska by Carhart — and Judge Kopf s familiarity with the evi dence and legal nuances — the Lin coln hearing is expected to be a bell wether for future appeals, legal observers said. Ban opponents are hoping that courts will follow precedent and mle in their favor. "Five courts of appeal have said that (the laws) must include an exception for the health of the mother," Priscilla Smith, attorney for Carhart and the plaintiffs, told Kopf. Procedures for terminating preg nancies are varied, Smith told Kopf, » and usually rely on the discretion of the doctor. Therefore Congress cannot issue a sweeping ban, she said. "Physicians have learned to expert the unexpected," said Smith, who in tends to present more than a dozen doc tors and experts in the next two weeks. But lead U.S. Attorney Anthony Cop polino argued that because the proce dures are varied, Congress could not be expected to be specific in its language. "We can't seem to get a common term," he said about the disagree ments over how to define the abor tions in dispute. Coppolino promised to present updated evidence and experts to con vince Kopf that Congress acted based on new, detailed information. But Kopf, who read pretrial transcripts of Congress' debate, indicated that he would be hard to convince. "I don't see (that) Congress spent anywhere near the effort that you folks did in trying to give me a clear picture," he told the attorneys. Kopf seemed to view the bipartisan bill more as a political creation than a legislative one. Some lawmakers have termed the procedure "barbaric." "The question really is, 'Does Con gress really care about whether the procedure is unsafe or not?"' he asked. (cj 2004, Chicago tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune information Services. r Premier Travel "1 Eurail Passes issued on-site!!! E-mail: fares@luv2travel.com 1011 Harlow /gy-, , 7, 747-0909 Student Travel Experts Today's crossword solution
