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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from Arizona officials seeking to revive a state law that barred most abortions after 20 weeks of fetal gestation. The justices offered no reasons for turning down the appeal, as is their custom.
The case concerned an Arizona law, enacted in 2012, that prohibits abortions, except in medical emergencies, when the gestational age of the fetus is more than 20 weeks. The law’s definition of medical emergency is narrow, encompassing conditions requiring immediate abortion to avert a pregnant woman’s death or a “serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.â€
The law’s sponsors claimed fetuses can feel pain at 20 weeks, a contention that has been disputed by major medical groups.
In May, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that the Arizona law was unconstitutional “under a long line of invariant Supreme Court precedents†starting with Roe v. Wade in 1973.
The core message of those decisions, the appeals court said, was that women have a constitutional right to end their pregnancies before the fetus is viable.
Arizona officials conceded that the law covered abortions before fetal viability, currently about 24 weeks as measured from a woman’s last menstrual period. But they argued that the law did not amount to an outright ban, only to a permissible regulation, one they said was justified by the state’s interest in preventing fetal pain and the increased risk to women as their pregnancies progress. The appeals court rejected both arguments.
Interesting. It would appear that the Supremes are looking to hold the status quo on abortion.