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U.S. Supreme Court orders partial birth abortion ruling to apply in Missouri case

By AP/KWMU

Washington, DC – The U.S. Supreme Court today ordered that its decision last week to uphold the ban on a disputed abortion procedure must be applied to a long-delayed lawsuit in Missouri.

The two-sentence order threw out a 2005 ruling from a federal appeals court that struck down a Missouri ban on certain late-term abortions. Lower courts found it lacked an exception for the health of pregnant women.

Last week, in a 5-4 decision last week, the high court said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

It was the first time the court banned a specific abortion procedure.

The 1999 Missouri law sought to ban the procedure but it was put on hold by a federal judge one day after the Legislature enacted it by overriding a gubernatorial veto.

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