Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Late Term Abortion

On Wednesday April 18, 2007, The United States Supreme Court upheld a law that banned the type of late-term abortion. The ruling, which was divided 5 to 4, could prove to be a historic decision. This could be a signal that the Supreme Court's willingness to revisit the basic right to abortion established in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case.

Roe v. Wade was the Supreme Court case that resulted in a landmark judicial opinion concerning privacy and abortion in the United States. According to the decision, most laws against abortion violated a constitutional right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This states that the government must normally respect all of a person's legal right.

The exact point when a pregnancy becomes late-term is not clearly defined. Some believe it is after sixteen weeks of pregnancy. However, a late-term abortion often refers to an induced abortion procedure that occurs after 20^th weeks of gestation.

Reasons commonly given for having late-term abortions include:

• A deteriorating financial situation
• A change in relationship with the father
• A lack of awareness of the pregnancy until its later stages
• Inability to have a abortion earlier in the pregnancy (possibly due to lack of funds, lack of transportation, or legal restriction)
• Discovery of a fetal abnormality undetectable earlier in the pregnancy.
• The pregnancy becomes a risk to the mothers life or health

As of April 2006, thirty-six states had bans against late-term abortions that were not facially unconstitutional (banning all abortions) or preceded by a court order. Thirteen of the states define viability as a certain number of weeks gestation, this is in contrast to the Supreme Court ruling that the attending physician be allowed to determine viability in each specific case. Ten states required a second physician to approve of the reason for the abortion, a practice specifically prohibited in court rulings.

There are three medical procedures associated with late-term abortions:

• Dilation and evacuation (D&E)
• Early induction of labor
• Intact dilatation and extraction (IDX or D&X) which is commonly referred to as partial-birth abortion

The ban by the Supreme Court on late-term abortions will still have to abide for the "health exception" for women who could suffer serious medical complications. This is the first time the Supreme Court has heard a major abortion case in six years. The ban specifically encompasses what doctors' call " intact dilatation and evacuation (IDE)" which congress in its legislation termed as inhumane.