The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal majority struck down the state’s 176-year-old abortion ban on Wednesday, ruling 4-3 that it was superseded by a newer state law that criminalizes abortions only after a fetus can survive outside the womb.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal majority struck down the state’s 176-year-old abortion ban on Wednesday, ruling 4-3 that it was superseded by a newer state law that criminalizes abortions only after a fetus can survive outside the womb.
“Viability” can even be quite fuzzy, because it all depends on the capabilities of medical science, and even then there’s a gray area. And who gets to decide whether a fetus that tests for a given birth defect is “viable”? Does “viable” mean that the fetus can be forced to have a heartbeat outside of the womb, even if they have to be cared for in a vegetative state forever?
Determined solely by the patient’s delivering physician at time of procedure. Full stop.
The law should not practice medicine.
You’re not wrong, but if the law says “legal until viable”, then that physician’s decision must be reviewable in court. Which means that no physician is going to sign off on “not viable” and put themselves at legal risk.
This is why the law should just say “legal”, full stop. (e: I just realized that you also used the phrase “full stop.” I promise I was not trying to be snarky, it just came out.)
There’s also an argument that it doesn’t matter. An unborn child is 100% feeding off of the parent carrying them. Nobody has the right to force that choice on anyone.
Oof … I’m very much for women making the final decision, yet the idea of no cutoff date (assuming a perfectly healthy mother and fetus) makes me uncomfortable. I’m imagining someone just changing their mind at 30 weeks. But of course that’s a highly unlikely scenario. More likely is a relationship ending and the mother realizing she won’t have the support she had anticipated. Or an abusive partner prevented her from getting the abortion sooner. I suppose there could also be financial reasons they couldn’t do it sooner.
Ya, it just makes me uncomfortable after the point of viability, but it’s not my life or my child or my choice, so I don’t disagree with you.
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Definitely - there are lots of reasons why abortion needs to be legal; I was only running down one avenue.
If you’re going to say anything other than unconditionally legal, you need some really clear legal definitions on something, but you certainly can. Like you could define viability as if you delivered it on the spot, you’d have a fully-formed baby with lungs that are ready to breathe, and otherwise unlikely to need life support. You could define the first 6 months of pregnancy as inviable.
You could define the burden of proof in a way that protects doctors, maybe someone trying to already wrongdoing needs to prove that no reasonable physician would agree with their judgement. You could even limit who has standing to take legal action, because some random person on the street isn’t party to it at all.
I’m not saying that “if the doctor and pregnant person agree, it’s legal” is bad, but there are certainly other reasonable options, that I think would play out similarly in practice. Like I’m assuming a doctor about to deliver a baby wouldn’t likely entertain a request for an abortion instead, nor would they likely get one.