An Iowa doctor’s one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that blocked implementation of a law the president signed Wednesday. Iowa City doctor Jill Vibhakar was one of four doctors who filed the suit, which was heard by a Nebraska judge after President Bush signed into the law the bill aiming to ban certain abortion procedures. A state law that tried to ban late-term abortions was similarly blocked in 1997 by a suit filed by Nebraska doctor Leroy Carhart, one of the plaintiffs in the current case. Carhart says the statue would prevent doctors from using the safest medical procedures to end pregnancies as early as the start of the second trimester, and he says by signing it the president put his patients’ lives at risk. Congress declared in passing the current bill that there’s no need for an exception to protect the health or life of the mother, but the judge who granted the injunction yesterday noted Congress didn’t hear from a single doctor who performs the procedure. Carhart challenged the new federal law for the same reasons he fought Nebraska’s attempt at an abortion ban, because he says it’s an attack on women’s right to obtain safe abortions, and it’s unconstitutional. Attorney Priscilla Smith of the Center for Reproductive Rights represented the four doctors who filed the suit against the new law. Smith says the law’s unconstitutional because it lacks an exception to let the safest possible procedure be performed to safeguard the woman’s health, a clause upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000, and because it’s so wide it also bans pre-viability abortions early in the first trimester of pregnancy. President Bush signed the late term abortion ban into law yesterday, and Congressman Steve King, a Republican from Kiron, was among those at the bill signing ceremony.King says it was a “great privilege” to be there, but he says it’s sad Congress had to pass a law to ban something King defines as “abhorrent.” King expected the lawsuit. King says it’s disappointing that the court case began “in the heartland of America” but he says “let’s get on with it.” The judge who moved to block the ban specifically cited the lack of an exemption for late term abortions that would preserve the health of the mother. King says such an exception is not needed. King says there is an exception for partial birth abortions that would save the life of the mother, but he says the procedure is never necessary to save the health of the mother. The Nebraska judge said the Supreme Court has ruled before that the health of the mother is to be a consideration. That same judge says the new law has “serious vagueness problems.”
