On Monday, Judge James Teilborg of the United States District Court in Phoenix upheld an Arizona law
signed by Gov. Jan Brewer in April that bans all abortion procedures at
20 weeks from a woman’s last menstrual period, which is about 18 weeks
after fertilization.
It is the most aggressive of the previability abortion bans passed
recently by a handful of states. It defies binding Supreme Court
precedent that prevents states from banning abortions before a fetus can
survive outside the womb, which generally occurs at about 24 weeks.
To get around that pesky barrier, Judge Teilborg erroneously
characterized Arizona’s outright ban as a permissible “regulation” that
limits only “some” previability abortions. To make that argument, he
relied, in part, on the fact that the ban contains a dangerously narrow
exception for a “medical emergency.”
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