Arizona’s law making it a crime for doctors to perform abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy was drew questions from two federal appeals court judges who said it appears to flout the Roe v. Wade.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision permits women to abort pregnancies before fetuses can survive outside the uterus
Business Week reports U.S. Circuit Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld said he understood the Arizona legislation considered the possibility of a fetus feeling pain and the increased health risks to the mother when it wrote the law. Still, Roe v. Wade allows a woman to have an abortion even if she knows those risks, Kleinfeld said.
If upheld, Arizona’s law makes it a misdemeanor, punishable by as long as six months in jail, to perform an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, except in medical emergencies to prevent the mother’s death or “irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”
Arizona is one of nine states in the past two years to ban abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy.
In a somewhat-related issue, charges are flying of political ‘money laundering’ in Arizona regarding an anti-abortion group’s involvement in California ballot initiatives.
Arizona voters still have no way of knowing who put up $1.5 million to try to defeat two ballot initiatives, despite a California Supreme Court ruling ordering disclosure.
Former Arizona House Speaker Kirk Adams, president of Phoenix-based Americans for Responsive Leadership, filed a report Monday showing the entire $11 million the organization contributed to two California campaigns came from a second Phoenix-based group, the Center to Protect Patient Rights, which is headed by Republican political consultant Sean Noble and has given millions to conservative and anti-abortion causes.
Also: Michigan Judge Temporarily Blocks Health Law Mandate on Birth Control/The New York Times
