On April 6, 1977, a California woman who was seven and a half months pregnant decided to abort her baby. Into her womb a salt saline solution was injected, intended to burn the fetus both inside and out over the next 24 hours. After 18 hours, however, a little girl was born—alive. Because the abortionist had not yet arrived, the little two-pounder was rushed by a nurse to a hospital. Four surgeries and twenty-five years later, Gianna Jessen is a beautiful young woman who walks with a limp because of oxygen deprivation during the botched abortion. "I am happy to be alive," she cries. "Every day I thank God for life."

If Gianna's mother had sought an abortion today, she might have been given a partial-birth abortion (PBA), and Gianna never would have had a chance. In PBA the abortionist delivers an unborn child's body until only the head remains inside the mother, punctures the back of the child's skull with scissors, and sucks the baby's brains out before completing the delivery.

A January 2003 Gallup poll found that 70 percent of Americans favor a law to make PBA illegal in the last six months of pregnancy "except in cases necessary to save the life of the mother." Therefore one would think that the "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act," introduced into Congress the third week of February, would win easy passage. But opponents will make four objections, each of which is based on misinformation.

1. "In 2000 the Supreme Court already declared such a bill unconstitutional." The Court struck down a Nebraska statute because it might be interpreted to make another abortion procedure (D & E, which dismembers well-developed fetuses while still in the uterus) illegal, and because the Court believed that PBA in some cases might be the procedure ...