WASHINGTON, 20 April 2007 — The US Supreme Court upheld a federal law on Wednesday prohibiting partial birth abortion, marking the first time a specific abortion procedure has been successfully banned. President Bush’s two appointees joined a court majority in a 5-to-4 vote, which said Congress was exercising its license to “promote respect for life, including the life of the unborn.”

The ruling culminates a 12-year campaign by the National Right to Life Committee to outlaw the procedure, which its leaders were the first to dub “partial-birth” abortion. They said the procedure was akin to “infanticide” because the fetus is killed after being extracted partly from the uterus.

The most important vote was that of the newest justice, Samuel Alito Jr. In another 5-to-4 seven years ago, his predecessor, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, voted to strike down a similar state law. But the retirement of Justice O’Connor in 2005 and President Bush’s appointment of Justice Alito to succeed her tipped the balance the other way.

The court said the “government has a legitimate and substantial interest in preserving and promoting fetal life.” In 2000, the court, also by a 5-4 margin, struck down a nearly identical state law on the grounds that it could force some women to undergo riskier surgery during the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy.

The decision predictably pleased the Republican presidential contenders and disappointed Democratic candidates.

Partisans on both sides agreed the Supreme Court’s decision is the beginning, not the end, or the abortion debate in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Both sides of the debate also predicted that the ruling will lead to more state legislatures moving ahead on restrictions, such as parent-notification laws.

The decision was a major victory for the Bush administration and its vigorous defense of the law, which President Bill Clinton had vetoed twice before President Bush signed it. It was the first time the court upheld a ban on an abortion procedure. Though Wednesday’s opinion does not overturn Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion, the majority said it was prepared to uphold new restrictions on doctors who perform them and women who seek them.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, speaking for the court, said that the government may not forbid abortion outright but that it “may use its voice and its regulatory authority” to dissuade women from ending pregnancies. The ban on what opponents call “partial-birth” abortions will “encourage some women to carry the infant to full term, thus reducing the absolute number” of such abortions, he added.

Ginsburg, the court’s only woman, called Wednesday’s decision “alarming.” It “cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court,” she said.