Two abortion decisions in one day.

Yesterday, both the 9th Circuit and the 2d Circuit Courts of Appeals issued decisions holding the federal partial-birth abortion ban unconstitutional. The statute lacks a health exception.

''We are reluctant to invalidate an entire statute,'' 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote. ''However, after considering all of the obstacles to our devising a narrower remedy, we conclude that such is our obligation.''...

Chief Judge John M. Walker, a relative of former President George Herbert Walker Bush who serves in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said the application of the statue ''might deny some unproven number of women a marginal health benefit.''...

The 2nd Circuit ruling Tuesday was marked by an unusually sharp dissent by Judge Chester J. Straub, who said he believed Congress' determination that the procedure was never medically necessary to protect a women's health was well founded and supported by a lower court ruling.

''Allowing a physician to destroy a child as long as one toe remains within the mother would place society on the path towards condoning infanticide,'' he said....

''Even though the supporters of this law purported to be banning one particular abortion procedure, the law as the court found would in fact chill doctors from performing virtually any second trimester abortion,'' said Eve Gartner, senior staff attorney for Planned Parenthood and lead counsel in the 9th Circuit case.