Posted on 07/27/2005 12:34:24 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
As the John Roberts' Supreme Court nomination fight opens, the predicted battle to save or kill Roe v Wade already has taken to the streets, the Internet and the media. But the 32-year-old constitutional right to an abortion may face its gravest challenge not from red state values triumphing on the Supreme Court, but from medical research being carried out in elite blue state universities and in Europe and Asia.
It is the very language of Roe that carries the seed of its own possible irrelevance within the next several years. Roe enunciated the more or less unencumbered right of a woman to obtain an abortion prior to fetal viability. After viability, the right of states to regulate or prohibit abortions arise. The court defined legal viability as "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid."
But medical science is remorselessly advancing on two fronts along paths that may fairly soon seize and destroy in a scientific pincer movement the viability of Roe's reasoning.
When Roe was handed down in 1973, the survivability of prematurely born babies was not medically possible before 28 weeks of gestation. Today, babies born after only 20 weeks of gestation routinely survive -- and thus are viable under the Roe definition (and thus potentially legally safe from the abortionist's medical weapons).
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
From the article:
... successfully removed goat fetuses from mother goats and placed them in tanks of amniotic fluid stabilized at goat body temperature, while connecting the baby goat's umbilical cord to machines that pump in nutrients and dispose of waste.
You miss my point. In this scenario, abortion will no longer be an option. It will have been rendered illegal UNDER CURRENT LAW by technology.
If abortion is no longer possible, ones position on abortion is of no consequence.
Under this scenario, therefore, wouldn't it make more sense in this post-911, post-clinton-debacle world to focus your energies on defeating hillary clinton and electing someone who will make certain all the little children live?
If that were true under Current Law, PBA would be illegal (doctors describe PBA as Infanticide, PBA=Partial Birth Abortion).
There are two rulings by the US Supreme Court -- Roe v. Wade (Norma McCorvey vs the DA of Dallas) and Doe v. Bolton (Sandra Canoe vs the DA of Fulton County).
The Doe v. Bolton decision makes abortion legal during any time of the pregnancy!
The Roe v. Wade ruling made abortion legal, but did not say the term of the abortion (it supposedly was only 1st Term abortions).
Currently, the Partial Birth Abortion Ban signed by President Bush and the Congress is in jeopardy of being overruled by the US Supreme Court (if Roberts is not on that court come October).
Roberts being on the court in October is important -- Sandra Day O'Connor can come out of retirement to take the bench in October with two cases I care about coming up.
You make an interesting point. Does Doe v. Bolton make abortion for ANY reason legal during any time of the pregnancy?
I suppose what may happen is that rather than changing minds on abortion, instantaneous viability of the fetus at conception, which is the theoretical limit that technology is approaching, will force the redefining of what it means to be born. Only then, apparently, will abortion be murder in the legal sense.
I even posted a source that has pointed this out this past week.
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