Quote:
Originally Posted by OldDog
No doubt it will.
24 weeks is accepted legally for now. "Viability exists as a function of biomedical and technological capacities, which are different in different parts of the world. As a consequence, there is, at the present time, no worldwide, uniform gestational age that defines viability. Viability is not an intrinsic property of the fetus because viability should be understood in terms of both biological and technological factors."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11753511
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor argued in a 1983 decision that Roe was on a "collision course with itself." She said that improvements in technology would continually push the point of fetal viability closer to the beginning of the pregnancy, allowing states greater opportunity to regulate the right to an abortion. She had the foresight to see fetal viability as a moving target. See why these things aren't as cut and dried and some today would have us believe?
I would much prefer to see abortions decrease (or end? one can always hope) because of a societal change than by government decree. Government alone is as incapable of eliminating abortions as it is of eliminating poverty or drugs. |
except there has been no movement on the 24 week viability. maybe someday there will, and we can cross that bridge if/when we get there. but, in forty years, we haven't gotten there yet. and we all know there are limits to human ability, so there's no telling if we ever lower that.
and they have decreased, as have pregnancy rates across all population segments. not sure what you mean about 'societal changes', but it's felt that the falling rates (which have even fallen for teens) are due to more education and availability of birth control.
i have to say, i don't care if they decrease.i don't feel any outrage at all that they occur, especially when the vast majority occur in the first weeks of pregnancy, altho the pro-life crowd only ever talks about 20 weeks and further (less than 2% of all abortions), because they can try to summon up more emotion that way..