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Arizona’s stringent abortion law, which includes a ban on all abortions beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy, was upheld by a federal judge yesterday, setting up a potential showdown at the Supreme Court that could further chip away at Roe v. Wade. The Arizona law will now take effect tomorrow, as scheduled.
U.S. District Judge James Teilborg said the statute might prompt a few pregnant women who are considering abortion to make the decision earlier. But he said the law was constitutional because it didn’t prohibit women from deciding to end their pregnancies.
The judge also wrote that the state provided “substantial and well-documented” evidence that an unborn child has the capacity to feel pain during an abortion by at least 20 weeks.
Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed the measure into law in April, making Arizona one of 10 states with 20-week bans.
Arizona’s ban, set to take effect Thursday, prohibits abortion starting at 20 weeks of pregnancy except in medical emergencies. The state currently bans abortion starting at viability, which is the ability to survive outside the womb — generally considered to be about 24 weeks. A normal pregnancy lasts about 40 weeks.
Ten states have 20-week abortion bans, so that’s not an innovation in the law per se. But the acceptance by Judge Teilborg of the “fetal pain” argument further moves down the road a key argument put forward by the anti-choice movement. The ruling in South Dakota does even more damage. There, the full 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld South Dakota’s abortion law, which requires doctors to inform patients that abortions correlate with increased risk of suicide. So mandates are right out in health care, unless you want to force a doctor to say that a legal medical procedure will cause you to kill yourself. Also, free speech, except for doctors. Got it.
Incidentally, the link between abortion and suicide is unproven, as a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit ruled earlier. This full panel overturned them, without relying on any proof of the link:
The appeals court ruled on Tuesday that conclusive proof of a causation was not required and the suicide advisory was not misleading and was relevant to the patient’s decision.
Wow. Just call that the “right to lie” bill.
Conservative anti-choice activists have skillfully used state legislatures to advance their ideological pursuits, and now they appear to be winning in the courts as well.
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The state currently bans abortion starting at viability, which is the ability to survive outside the womb — generally considered to be about 24 weeks.
Its a wonder pro-lifers don’t lobby the govt to spend billions researching
fetal transplant (whether to surrogate mothers or artificial wombs).
If viability is the legal standard under Roe, then abortion rights (ex cases of rape, incest and life of the mother) are more or less doomed as technology improves.
If a fetus can feel pain, the trip down the birth canal must be excruciating.
So, to carry this one step further, all mothers giving birth naturally must also be charged with abuse. C-sections for all.
This is what happens when the Republican Party gets taken over by religious extremists and the Democratic Party throws women overboard in a vain effort to find “common ground” with the GOP.
By the way, one of the stupidest arguments I’ve ever run across was made by Mara Vanderslice, a Democratic consultant in charge of “reaching out” to the megachurch crowd (talk about vain efforts!). She urged candidates not to think of Roe v. Wade as an issue of constitutional rights. Which is like like leaving income out of a discussion of poverty or not thinking of Iraq and Afghanistan as armed conflicts.
Agree 100%. Democratic Party, “useless and cluless.” I suppose eventually we will have some states that permit abortions and others that make it almost impossible. LUcky we have a neat color-coded map for that.
All most happening now. This country does more C-sections than any other. I believe it is a third of all births. Nuts.
C sections get done so often because the OB/GYNs have other things to do than wait around for their patient to give birth. We can’t have all those doctors showing up late at the golf course, can we?
We already have a country where some states permit abortion and others make it almost impossible. The right wing has been working on shutting down abortion clinics for decades; there are now several states which have only one clinic open part-time for the entire state. Other states have so few clinics so far apart that, considering waiting periods and other barriers enacted to the procedure by the legislatures, it is virtually impossible and prohibitively expensive to obtain a legal abortion now.
Freedoms are not usually taken away all at once; they are chipped away over a long period of time. That way very few people notice the cumulative effect, or rationalize away the small steps. The ones who do notice are characterized as alarmists when they speak out against what’s happening.