Michigan Attorney General: Abortion Ban is Constitutional 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 5, 2005
Lansing, MI (LifeNews.com) — Michigan’s top attorney issued an opinion Tuesday saying that the state’s latest attempt to ban the gruesome partial-birth abortion procedure is constitutional. Attorney General Mike Cox disputed a contention made by abortion advocates that the law wrongly bans all forms of abortion.
Cox said the law only bans the partial-birth abortion procedure because it defines the abortion as being performed when nay part of the unborn child’s body is outside the mother.
He said the new law would not ban other tips of abortion because they do not involve the partial birth of the baby before the abortion is performed.
The law does not put any restrictions "on actions taken before an anatomical part of an intact, live fetus passes beyond the plane of the vaginal introitus of the mother’s body," Cox said in the opinion released Monday, according to an Associated Press report.
U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood approved putting the law on hold in March while a lawsuit filed against it by abortion advocates proceeds. The hold will keep the law from being in place until June 15.
The state legislature gave final approval to the Legal Birth Definition Act in June 2004 after Governor Jennifer Granholm vetoed the bill. Pro-life groups obtained the signatures of over 460,000 people to bring the measure before the legislature in a veto-proof form.
The ACLU, the Center for Reproductive Rights, a pro-abortion law firm, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the nation’s largest abortion business, filed the lawsuit in a federal district court in Detroit.
The groups argue that the measure could be construed as a ban on all forms of abortion.
While two previous partial birth abortion bans in Michigan were struck down by the courts in 1996 and 1999, supporters of the Legal Birth Definition Act say it was specifically written to pass the constitutionality tests.
While President Bush recently signed a Partial-Birth Abortion Ban into law, the federal version differs from Michigan’s in that it expressly bans the partial-birth abortion procedure. It is currently being blocked until its constitutionality can be determined.
Related web sites:
Right to Life of Michigan – https://www.rtl.org
Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox –
https://www.michigan.gov/ag
