Women's health is "more at risk" now than it was before the Supreme Court upheld the so-called "partial-birth" abortion ban, New York Times columnist Judith Warner writes in an opinion piece. According to Warner, "doctors have been forced into a danger zone where they must weigh what they believe to be best medical practices against the need to protect themselves from the threat of prosecution."

According to Warner, the "dilemma" doctors face over whether to protect themselves from prosecution or protect women's health has "increasingly pitted the 'interests' of the fetus against the health of the woman." Warner adds, "It makes the true intent of the partial-birth abortion ban clear: the point is not (in the short term) to stop seemingly brutal fetal deaths, but rather to make all abortions as burdensome, as difficult and as emotionally and physically trying for women and for doctors -- as possible."

Warner writes that following the Supreme Court decision, "fetuses will be spared no brutality" with legal second-trimester abortions that are "no less awful to contemplate" than partial-birth abortion. The result of the ban for women will be "more time-consuming and costly abortion services, additional rounds of amniocentesis, more pain and more risk of infection," Warner writes, concluding that the "outcome for the fetus won't change" (Warner, New York Times, 8/7).

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