NEW YORK — Two federal appeals courts on opposite sides of the country declared the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act unconstitutional Tuesday, saying the measure lacks an exception for cases in which a woman’s health is at stake. The first ruling came from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Hours later, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued a similar decision in a 2-1 ruling. The New York decision affirmed a 2004 ruling by a judge who upheld the right to perform the procedure even as he described the procedure as “gruesome, brutal, barbaric and uncivilized.” Tuesday’s ruling 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. He added: “I find the current expansion of the right to terminate a pregnancy to cover a child […]