Little Rock Family Planning Services v. Jegley

Abstract

Court Decision: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit agreed with a lower court that had found Arkansas's Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1997 to be unconstitutionally overbroad and had permanently enjoined enforcement of the Act. The Act had made it a crime to perform "an abortion in which the person performing the abortion partially vaginally delivers a living fetus before taking the life of the fetus and completing the delivery." Physicians who perform abortions had challenged the constitutionality of the Act. Although the state had intended to ban only the dilation and extraction (D & X) procedure, the Act implicitly banned common procedures such as suction-curettage and dilation and evacuation (D & E). Because the law banned commonly accepted abortion procedures, the Court of Appeals concluded that Arkansas's Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act created an undue burden on the rights of women who seek a second-trimester abortion for a nonviable fetus.