Know your laws.

Fuck.

I'm so sick of Roe v. Wade being an issue in this election. It even got me to break out my Constitutional Law book. Let me tell anyone who reads this blog the truth:

Roe v. Wade is no longer good law.

There. I've said it.

Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey is the controlling case law, now. In this case, Pennsylvania had a law that required a woman's informed consent before the procedure, requires that she receive the neccessary information 24 hours prior to the abortion, and requires that minors have their parents' permission or aquire a judicial bypass to receive the procedure. Also, married women had to sign a statement saying they had notified their husband of their intent to have an abortion. There were exceptions to the law for emergency situations.

The Supreme Court reaffirmed the right of a pregnant woman to choose to have an abortion, as they ruled in Roe v. Wade, however, it tossed out the trimester timeline for abortion laws established in that famous case. Instead, they said the individual states have the right to restrict abortions after fetal viability. The Court said that the State has the "legitimate interests from the outset of the pregnancy in protecting the health of the woman and the life of the fetus that may become a child." The court introduced the undue burden test, and declared that the law was OK in that regard except in the case of spousal notification. States may pass laws so long as not undue burden on individual’s rights.

tl;dr: Abortions are still legal, but viability is now the timeframe, and states can make it more difficult to acquire them so long as their reasoning is sound and the hoops one must jump through are not too ridiculous.

~ Nick
Sell me, I'm a skeptical boy