Legal Commentary

Nebraska Limits Abortions to First 20 Weeks

By Jeralyn

Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman will sign a bill into law today that bans abortions if the woman is 20 weeks pregnant. The reasoning: the fetus might feel pain. The text of the bill, LB1103, is here. Some snippets:

(4) There is substantial evidence that abortion methods used at and after twenty weeks would cause substantial pain to an unborn child;

(5) Expert testimony confirms that an unborn child is capable of experiencing substantial pain even if the pregnant woman herself has received local analgesic or general anesthesia; and

(6) There is a valid state interest in reducing or preventing events in which pain is inflicted on sentient and nonsentient creatures. Examples of laws that serve this interest are laws governing the use of laboratory animals, laws requiring pain-free methods of slaughtering livestock, and laws regarding hunting methods on federal lands.

[More...]

No person shall perform or induce or attempt to perform or induce an abortion upon a woman when the probable gestational age of the woman’s unborn child is twenty or more weeks unless, in reasonable medical judgment, she has a condition which so complicates her medical condition as to necessitate the abortion of her pregnancy to avert her death or to avert serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.

Of course the bill will be challenged in court. Jurist says:

The possibility of the Supreme Court hearing a case challenging these laws could have an impact on the confirmation hearings of President Obama's nominee to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 13, 2010 (boomark / email).