Doctor says women’s rights still at risk

By TIMBERLY ROSS / The Associated Press

BELLEVUE — Dr. LeRoy Carhart is entrenched in what he calls a never-ending battle, one that abortion opponents have strongly urged him to surrender.

For now, his battleground is the U.S. Supreme Court. A victory there would overturn a 2003 congressional ban on what abortion opponents call partial-birth abortion and add to the Nebraska doctor’s success in his campaign for women’s reproductive rights.

“The only way women come close to achieving equality is if they can control their fertility,” Carhart said during an interview at his suburban Omaha clinic. “Abortion rights for men have been available since the beginning of time. When they’re unhappy with a pregnancy, they walk away. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the day after conception or when the child is 10 years old.” The Supreme Court heard arguments in Carhart’s case in November and is expected to rule by early summer.

Carhart, 65, and the staff at his Bellevue clinic perform abortions as late as the 18th week of pregnancy.

The procedures are prohibited by the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, a law Carhart says Congress had no authority to make.

The Bush administration says the law draws a bright line between abortion and infanticide. The method involves partially extracting an intact fetus from the uterus, then cutting or crushing its skull.

Doctors most often refer to the procedure as a dilation and extraction or an intact dilation and evacuation abortion.

The procedure appears to take place most often in the middle third of pregnancy. A few thousand are performed each year, according to rough estimates, out of more than 1.25 million abortions in the United States annually. Ninety percent of all abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and are not at issue.

Six federal courts have struck down the partial-birth abortion ban as an impermissible restriction on a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion that the Supreme Court established in its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973.

“This ban is so broadly and vaguely written, it will criminalize abortion much earlier in pregnancy than people think,” said Eve Gartner, an attorney for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which has also argued against the ban before the Supreme Court. “It is part of a bigger agenda to chip away at the underpinnings of Roe and ultimately to criminalize all abortions.”

In 2000, the high court ruled for Carhart in striking down a similar Nebraska law because it lacked an exception to preserve a woman’s health and encompassed a more common abortion method.

The cases have put him in the national spotlight and provoked hostility from some abortion opponents.

The clinic, his house and those of his employees have been picketed. So has the equestrian center he owns and his daughter, Janine, runs.

In 1991, Carhart’s rural home burned in a fire he believes was started by an abortion foe. The family dog and cat were killed, as were 17 horses trapped in a barn.

Those sacrifices are Carhart’s battle scars.

“It’s worth it to me,” he said. “You have to fight for what you believe in.”

Julie Schmit-Albin, executive director of anti-abortion group Nebraska Right to Life, has followed Carhart’s legal battles. She said he is a “poster boy” for a procedure her group believes is tantamount to infanticide.

“This man has a vested interest in protecting his industry,” she said. “He wants to be able to kill unborn babies in any manner he deems necessary to bring him his profits.”

Schmit-Albin was present for Carhart’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court in 2000 and before federal courts on the current case. His testimony about the abortion procedures he performs is candid, she said.

“He matter-of-factly just describes what he does,” she said. “It’s really very grisly to listen to.”

Carhart said he’s able to champion abortion rights because he doesn’t have to rely on his medical practice to pay the bills. The military pension he gets from his 21 years in the Air Force provides enough income to support his family.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, a New York-based advocacy group, covers many of his legal costs.

“We have to keep talking about abortion until it doesn’t remain a four-letter word,” Carhart said.

And in his view, too few supporters are talking about it.

If women are “not willing to stand up for abortion rights in public, then I feel we’re eventually doomed to lose Roe v. Wade or the right to abortion,” he said.

Although voters in Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon and South Dakota have rejected total restrictions on the procedure, they are not necessarily speaking out in favor of abortion rights.

“What people say when you talk to them on the streets and you’re looking at them face to face and they’re on camera may well differ (from) what they say when they go in the voting booth and close the curtains,” Carhart said. “They can vote what they believe and not worry about what their neighbor’s thinking.”

Until those beliefs are out in the open and represented in Congress, Carhart sees the potential for Roe v. Wade to be overturned and a federal ban enacted restricting all abortions.

That’s why he feels compelled to keep fighting.

“No matter what happens, whether you win or lose this round,” he said, “there’ll be another round tomorrow.”