Brian Fahling

About the author: Brian Fahling is the senior trial attorney for the American Family Association's Center for Law and Policy.

In June 2000, the Supreme Court declared in Stenberg v. Carhart that a Nebraska statute that forbade partial-birth abortion was unconstitutional. Nebraska's statute was based upon the medical and legal definition of abortion, which defines abortion as the death of the fetus within the uterus. The partial-birth abortion procedure requires induced labor and the partial delivery of the fetus before it is killed. Once the fetus passes through the cervix and into the vaginal canal, the birth process has begun, and the term "abortion" no longer applies. The 1973 Supreme Court ruling, Roe v. Wade, guaranteed a woman's right to choose abortion, but it did not grant her the right to kill an infant who is in the...