On April 18, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the constitutionality of the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

The act does not affect the vast majority of the 1.3 million abortions that occur in the United States annually, according to the court, "in which the physician vacuums out the embryonic tissue."

Nor does it effect the usual second trimester abortion method, in which the fetus is "usually ripped apart as it is removed" with forceps.

Rather, the act only prohibits those late-term abortions, which have as their main difference from the usual second trimester abortion method, that the doctor "deliberately delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire head is outside the mother’s body "¦, or in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside of the mother’s body, for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus, and performs the act, other than the completion of delivery, that kills the fetus."

The narrow anti-abortion victory, which affects very few abortions in the short-term, but may prove to be significant in the long-term, admittedly might not have been achieved without a decidedly anti-abortion administration and committed anti-abortion senators to respectively nominate and confirm the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.

But some critics of the court’s decision accuse the five justices who opined in favor of the ban’s constitutionality of allowing their Catholic faith to unduly influence their judgment.

For example, an editorial cartoon recently appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, featuring five of the nine justices wearing the mitres (hats) of Catholic bishops. On ABC’s "The View," Rosie O’Donnell implied the Catholic majority opinion represented a violation of the so-called "Separation of Church and State."

An article by Chuck Colson on the New York State Right to Life Committee Web page claims that former University of Chicago Law School Dean Geoffrey Stone wrote, "all five justices in the majority (in this case) are Catholic. The four justices who are either Protestant or Jewish all voted in accord with settled precedent. "¦ The five justices in the majority "¦ failed to respect the fundamental difference between religious belief and morality."

The conclusion that the Catholic justices voted based on their religious beliefs is without any factual foundation.

The right of the state to "regulate" abortions was already established by previous courts. Those who sought to overturn the ban argued that it was vague and that it undermined a woman’s so-called "right to abortion" because it didn’t allow partial-birth abortions when a woman’s health necessitated it.

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The majority upheld the ban when it found that the ban was not "vague." The particular method of abortion that is prohibited is very specific and was very precisely articulated by the 2003 law.

Further, the majority of justices found that it did not require a "health exception clause" because the medical community itself has reached nothing near a consensus that this particular method of abortion is ever necessary for an expectant mother.

I wonder if those who would falsely accuse the majority of deciding based on their religious beliefs would accuse the minority of the same.

On the one hand, the illogical criticisms and their going virtually unnoticed might be simply dismissed as the latest representation of anti-Catholic bigotry and tolerance of it, especially in the media. (Just imagine the backlash and "mea culpas" that would have followed a cartoon strip intended to be critical of a court’s decision, depicting the majority judges in the head gear of any religion other than Catholic.)

On the other hand, at least this Catholic (and clergyman) is proud -- not offended -- by this identification with the cause of life. I think I might rather be offended if I were a pro-life Protestant, Jew, Muslim or atheist! The criticisms assumed that Catholics have a monopoly on concern for the life of the pre-born person. They failed to recognize -- not surprisingly -- that the concern for the lives of pre-born people is a matter of urgency for all people of good will, who believe in absolute and universal truths, which alone establish a basis of right versus wrong.

"The sanctity of human life is not merely Catholic doctrine but part of humanity’s global ethical heritage and our nation’s founding principle" (US Catholic Bishops, Living the Gospel of Life, 1998).

If their Catholicity has influenced them at all, I believe it has made the judges more committed to facts and to truth. That was the commitment the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were pleased to make; it is hopefully the commitment of all of its interpreters, regardless of creed.

Father Michael Flannery is pastor of St. John the Baptist in Walton, Holy Family Church in Downsville and St. Peter’s in Delhi.