http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/06/01/national1320EDT0636.DTL
A federal judge Tuesday declared the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act unconstitutional, saying the measure infringes on a woman’s right to choose.
[…]
U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton’s ruling came in one of three lawsuits challenging the legislation President Bush signed last year.
“The act poses an undue burden on a woman’s right to choose an abortion,” she wrote.
[…]
Bush signed the bill in November, saying “a terrible form of violence has been directed against children who are inches from birth while the law looked the other way.”
In the banned procedure — known as intact dilation and extraction to doctors, but called partial-birth abortion by opponents — the living fetus is partially removed from the womb, and its skull is punctured or crushed.