Some states getting ready to revisit Roe v. Wade
INDIANAPOLIS -- Taking direct aim at Roe v. Wade, lawmakers from several states are proposing broad restrictions on abortion with the goal of forcing the US Supreme Court -- soon to include two new justices -- to revisit the landmark ruling issued 33 years ago yesterday.
The bill under consideration here would ban abortion except when continuing the pregnancy would put the woman's life or physical health in danger of ''substantial permanent impairment." Similar legislation is pending in Ohio, Georgia, and Tennessee.
The bills are in direct conflict with the Supreme Court's 1973 rulings establishing abortion as a constitutional right. Roe v. Wade and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, asserted that doctors may consider ''all factors . . . relevant to the well-being of the patient," including emotional and psychological health.
In the years since, states have adopted a variety of laws designed to restrict access to abortion or require women to consider alternatives. Those efforts are expected to continue this year; many states are considering proposals to impose new licensing standards on abortion clinics or to require women seeking abortion first to view ultrasound images of their fetus and discuss with a counselor the pain a fetus might feel during the procedure.
More than 50 such bills were passed in 2005 -- twice as many as in 2004, according to the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Increasingly, lawmakers opposed to abortion are seeking bolder measures.
Republican Represenative Troy Woodruff, serving his first term in the Legislature, wrote House Bill 1096 knowing that it would conflict with Roe v. Wade. That was precisely his point: He wants his ban appealed to the Supreme Court, in hopes that the justices will overturn Roe and give states the power to make abortion a crime. ''On an issue that's this personal, it should be decided as local as possible," Woodruff said. ''We either want these procedures, or we don't. . . . And I don't."
The debate is unfolding as the Senate prepares to vote this week on Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.
At least a dozen states have criminal laws banning abortion. They cannot be enforced as long as Roe v. Wade remains binding. In theory, they could take effect immediately upon a reversal.
Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York, and other abortion rights activists predict that abortion would remain legal on both coasts and in a few scattered states in between -- among them Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, and New Mexico. They would expect at least 19 states across the Midwest and South to ban abortion.
Rallies and protests were held in several cities over the weekend to mark the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling, reflecting the growing tension at a time the makeup of the high court is about to change.
Thousands of abortion opponents massed outside Minnesota's Capitol yesterday to call for a state ban on public funding of abortion for Medicaid recipients.
Abortion rights supporters held a candlelight vigil outside the US Supreme Court last night. Today, antiabortion activists planned to converge on the Washington Mall to hear speakers supporting their cause and march on the Congress and Supreme Court.
In San Francisco on Saturday, thousands of abortion opponents shouldering signs with slogans such as ''Peace Begins in the Womb" marched in protest of the Roe decision, while abortion rights supporters along the march route waved clothes hangers and shouted ''Bigots go home." 