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Constitutional Law Keyed to Farber
Gonzales v. Carhart
Citation:
Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124, 127 S. Ct. 1619, 167 L.Ed.2d 480 (2007)Facts
In 2003, Congress passed and the President signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The controversial concept of partial-birth abortion is defined in the Act as any abortion in which the death of the fetus occurs when “the entire fetal head […] or […] any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother.” Dr. Leroy Carhart and other physicians who perform late-term abortions sued to stop the Act from going into effect. The plaintiffs argued that the Act could apply to a more common abortion procedure known as “D&E” (“dilation and evacuation”), as well as to the less common “intact D&E,” sometimes called D&X (“dilation and extraction”).
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Topic Resources
Topic Refresher Course
Substantive Due Process