TX 20-week abortion ban signed into law
Justifiable Law. One which Breitbart explains should survive legal challenge...
Breitbart: Today Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed into law a pro-life bill which will very likely be upheld by the Supreme Court. The law disallows most abortions after 20 weeks, the point by which an unborn child can fully feel physical pain and therefore would actually experience the agony of dying during the abortion procedure.
It also requires the doctor performing the abortion to be credentialed to admit patients at a local hospital, so if anything goes wrong during the abortion the doctor can personally get the mother immediate medical attention.
This law—or one of the other 20-week abortion laws that have recently been enacted and are being challenged in court—is very likely to be upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Citing a 1992 court case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the Court revisited abortion, ruling that 'abortion is not a fundamental right such as free speech, religious liberty, or the right to own a gun,' regulations and restrictions on abortion came into play...
The test for abortion cases is whether the law imposes an “undue burden” on a woman seeking abortion before the child could live outside the womb (which has been at 24 weeks in recent years, but with advances in medicine that line continues to move sooner in the pregnancy). After that point—called “viability”—Casey allows abortion to be completely banned so long as the pregnancy does not endanger the life or health of the mother.
Breitbart then cites the makeup of the current Court to show how the TX law is likely to be upheld...
Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy were the key votes in Casey. Of the two, O’Connor was pro-abortion and Kennedy leans against abortion. With the solidly-conservative Samuel Alito taking O’Connor’s seat in 2006, the new reality is that any abortion restriction that is good enough for Kennedy should survive a court challenge.
This Texas law (or one of its counterparts in Wisconsin or another state) will show whether this theory is correct. If you carefully study Kennedy’s jurisprudence—not only regarding abortion but many other issues as well—it seems Kennedy does not like the idea of completely shutting the door on federal courts saying women can abort their pregnancies—but wants to leave the door cracked open, not wide open.
If that is true, this law and many other restrictions should be upheld. One of these laws should be before the Supreme Court in the next 18 months, with a decision by summer 2015.
The fact is, the Supreme Court should not be the end-all-be-all in any decision, right or left. These 5-4 decisions, where a mere single justice determines the fate of law for over 300 million of us, are as far from the Framers' vision of constitutional republican governance, as the prevalence in its thwarting by the statists and their enablers today. That being said, one can only hope for the sake of the innocent, that late term abortion in America meets the same fate as partial-birth abortion...until one day, America on whole might once again respect the unequivocal sanctity of Life.
