Viability Is No Way to Judge a Human Life

Michie said:

As the Supreme Court hears arguments on abortion law, bad rulings should get tossed out for good. So should the “surviveability” standard.

Continued below.
Viability Is No Way to Judge a Human Life

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Looks like perhaps Justice Alito read this based on his line of questioning:

Justice Saumel Alito grilled a pro-choice lawyer during oral arguments in a major abortion case Wednesday over whether using viability as the threshold for when a state can ban abortion is a valid standard.

"What would you say to the argument that has been made many times by people who are pro-choice and pro-life, that the line really doesn't make any sense -- that it is, as Justice Blackman himself described it, arbitrary?" Alito asked Center for Reproductive Rights counsel Julie Rikelman.

Alito argued that a woman has the same interest in terminating a pregnancy after the viability line is crossed and that, "the fetus has an interest in having a life" both before and after viability.

And I thought Roberts questioning was promising. I hope I'm not disappointed:

Chief Justice John Roberts Wednesday questioned the lawyer challenging a Mississippi abortion law about why its ban on abortion after 15 weeks doesn't give women enough time to choose to terminate a pregnancy.

"If you think that the issue is one of choice -- that women should have a choice to terminate their pregnancy -- that supposes that there is a point at which they've had the fair choice, opportunity to choice," Roberts said. "And why would 15 weeks be an inappropriate line? Viability, it seems to me, doesn't have anything to do with choice. But if it really is an issue about choice, why is 15 weeks not enough time?"

Center for Reproductive Rights lawyer Julie Rickelman replied that changing the standard for when states can ban abortions would create a slippery slope.

"The state has conceded that some women will not be able obtain an abortion before 15 weeks and this law will bar them from doing so," she said. "Without viability, there will be no stopping point. States will rush to ban abortion at virtually any point in pregnancy."

Roberts, however, said that most other countries ban abortion after 15 weeks, and that the U.S. is in the company of North Korea and China in allowing late-term abortions.

Supreme Court hears Mississippi abortion case that could overturn Roe v. Wade: LIVE UPDATES