Doctors attack law as banning most second-term abortions: "Government lawyers say the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act prohibits an 'inhumane and gruesome procedure' that causes pain to the fetus and is never necessary to protect the health of a woman because there are proven and safe alternatives.

"The government maintains that the ban would affect as few as several thousand abortions annually, while lawyers for plaintiffs say 130,000 of the 1.3 million abortions performed annually in the United States may be affected."