U.S. Senate Passes Ban on Partial-Birth Abortion by Wide Margin
New Jersey's Corzine and Lautenberg vote "NO".
By a huge margin of 64-33, the U.S. Senate passed on March 13th a bill to ban the practice of partial-birth abortion nationwide. The ban, twice vetoed by President Bill Clinton, is strongly supported by President George W. Bush. It now goes to the House of Representatives, where it is expected to pass by a wide margin.
Both of New Jersey's U.S. Senators, Jon Corzine (D) and Frank Lautenberg (D), voted to keep partial birth abortion legal.
The bill (S. 3) legally defines a partial-birth abortion as any abortion in which the baby is delivered "past the navel . . . outside the body of the mother" before being killed. It is well documented that partial-birth abortions are performed by the thousands, mostly on healthy babies of healthy mothers in the fifth and sixth months of pregnancy, and sometimes even later.
On January 22nd, President Bush called partial-birth abortion an "abhorrent procedure that offends human dignity." He also announced that the ban would be a top priority in his January 28th State of the Union address. A January Gallup poll found that 70 percent of Americans favors the ban.