Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Arizona's Appeal, Blocking Previous Ban on Abortions after 20 Weeks from being Enacted

Ben Johnson : Jan 13, 2014
LifeSiteNews.com

[Arizona's HB 2036—signed into law in 2012]—restricted abortions performed 20 weeks after the mother's last menstruation or later on the grounds that such abortions are more likely to injure the mother and that an unborn baby at 20 weeks' gestation is able to feel pain.

(Washington, DC)—The U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to review a lower court ruling that struck down an Arizona law banning abortions after 20 weeks.

Justices announced this morning they would not hear the state's appeal of Horne v. Isaacson. In that case the lower court declared that the 20-week abortion ban violated a woman's right to abortion until the point of viability, at 24 weeks.

Governor Jan Brewer signed HB 2036, "The Mother's Health and Safety Act," into law on April 12, 2012. The act restricted abortions performed 20 weeks after the mother's last menstruation or later on the grounds that such abortions are more likely to injure the mother and that an unborn baby at 20 weeks' gestation is able to feel pain. The ACLU promptly filed suit.

U.S. District Judge James Teilborg upheld the law in July 2012, ruling that the notion that children can feel pain by 20 weeks was "uncontradicted." (Photo: Gov. Jan Brewer)

But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted an injunction against the law that August. The following May, a three-judge panel of the appeals court ruled that the legislation violated Supreme Court rulings that confer a "right" to abortion before the point of viability. The landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling defined viability as 28 weeks, but the court later revised this date to 24 weeks in 1992's Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

The state argued that since the bill allowed abortions if a pregnancy posed the "serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function," it was not a full ban but a regulation, permitted by Supreme Court rulings. Appeals judges rejected that notion.