Honestly, it’s a horrid procedure, and I don’t know many who would disagree with that on either side.  And making it illegal was the right thing to do, but what’s tricky about it is that, by making this illegal, the pro-life side lost a lot of momentum for their movement, and, what’s more, the banning of partial-birth abortions makes the pro-choice side uneasy, in that its basically at a point of stasis and if it asks for more it’ll be doing something wrong.  Still, the side with more pieces before the stalemate started was certainly pro-choice.  TNR has more:

Now that the ban on partial-birth abortion is the law of the land, the controversy that was most effective in stirring pro-life sentiment has died–to the great relief of pro-choice advocates. But isn’t the ban itself a victory for the pro-life movement? Not really. As staffers inside the National Right to Life Committee would have to concede, the ban does not significantly influence the abortion rate, since it only inhibits a particular procedure. The partial-birth procedure was only invented in the early 1990s; as such, abortion-rights activists have long lived without the procedure. What is more, pro-life groups do not even regard alternatives to partial-birth abortions as more humane, since some involve fetal dismemberment in the womb.

 

Thanks to the successful ban on partial-birth abortion, the pro-life movement has been deprived of one of the few campaigns that moved the national conscience. The potential of giving the movement new life may be a key factor in explaining why Obama and his pro-choices allies have been so slow to make it an issue.