State Senate passes bill banning abortion after 20 weeks (Wisconsin)

jsonline ^ | June 9, 2015 | Jason Stein and Andrew Hahn

[Morgana]

Madison — Amid a lengthy and wrenching debate, the Wisconsin Senate passed a Republican-backed bill Tuesday to ban abortions after 20 weeks from fertilization.

The bill is moving quickly toward becoming law but would be struck down by a federal trial court if a lawsuit against the measure is eventually brought, legal experts said.

Only the U.S. Supreme Court could uphold the measure, which carries no exemptions for rape, incest or the health of the mother, the constitutional law experts said. For district and appellate judges, existing Supreme Court precedent leaves them little leeway to sustain the legislation, which now heads to the Assembly.

"Whether the Supreme Court might eventually be persuaded to change its interpretation of the 14th Amendment to permit states to override a woman's decision a month earlier than 24 weeks, before the fetus is capable of surviving outside the womb, is hard to predict, but no lower court is free to make that change on its own, and neither a state Legislature nor a state's chief executive is free to do so either," said Laurence Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School for nearly a half-century.

The procedure occurs infrequently in Wisconsin and only in hospitals in cases of medical problems because abortion clinics in the state don't perform the procedure after that point in a woman's pregnancy, advocates said. That may make it more difficult for opponents of the law to identify a plaintiff and bring a lawsuit — so far they have been able to do so in three of the 14 states that have passed similar laws since 2010.

[mrs ippi]

Simple quiestion. Why should you be able to kill a baby in week 19?

[Blood of Tyrants]

Pro-abortion liberals say that any reason at all will do.

[WriteOn]

They really need to define health of the mother.