Judge rules that Michigan's law which defines legal birth is unconstitutional

Last night, federal Judge Denise Page Hood ruled that Michigan's Legal Birth Definition Act was unconstitutional. Here's the AP article. For a summary of how the law was enacted (via petition drive) and the background, check out Right to Life of Michigan's web page.

Hood's opinion has yet to be posted on the Eastern District Court's web site but reading some of the language quoted in the AP article seems to indicate that judge (who took 3 months to write the opinion) was more than a little befuddled with the law.

The act also does not distinguish between induced abortion and pregnancy loss.''

The law, which is around a page long, clearly states that physician will be immune from this act "if the perinate is being expelled from the mother's body as a result of a spontaneous abortion."

Hood agreed with abortion rights groups that argued the law would ban all pre-viable abortions, including ``dilation and evacuation,'' or D&E, the most common method of second-trimester abortion.

The law defines "perinate" by saying, ‘"Perinate" means a live human being at any point after which any anatomical part of the human being is know to have passed beyond the plane of the vaginal introitus until the point of complete expulsion or extraction from the mother's body.'

The law also defines "anatomical part" by saying, ‘"Anatomical part" means any portion of the anatomy of a human being that has not been severed from the body, but not including the umbilical cord or placenta.'

You can view a drawing of a D & E abortion here. By the time the leg or arm would be "delivered" or "born" it would already be severed so it would not be considered an anatomical part of the child and therefore the act wouldn't have anything to do with D & E abortions.