Roe-ing back

摘要

AMERICA'S ANTI-ABORTION campaigners tend not to be noisy champions of racial equality, the rights of women or the disabled. But they intend to change that. In recent months conservative states have introduced bills banning abortion on the grounds of race, sex or the diagnosis of a fetal abnormality. Last week South Dakota became the latest to do so, when the governor introduced a bill banning abortion because of Down syndrome. The aim, besides limiting access to abortion, is to push a case before the Supreme Court justices in the hope that they will use it to overturn Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court ruling of 1973 that legalised abortion. Since Amy Coney Barrett joined the court in October, giving it a 6-3 conservative majority, such an outcome seems likelier than ever. Mary Ziegler of Florida State University reckons the end of Roe ("a question of when rather than if"), is likely to come through one of these "reason bans", or a law banning abortions later in pregnancy. Supreme Court rulings allow abortion on demand (that is, for any reason) until a fetus is viable, at around 24 weeks. Polling suggests most Americans think it should generally be legal in the first three months of pregnancy, but not thereafter.