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This week a Supreme Court refashioned by Ronald Reagan will hear arguments in William L. Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, a case that could lead to Roe's being seriously weakened or even reversed. Either outcome would mean a new world, one in which abortions could be banned in many states or made greatly more difficult to get. After years in which court dictates let politicians dodge the whole roiling issue, abortion would be forced back into the political arena. Back to state legislatures and referenda. Back to lawmakers and voters...
Nowhere has the ground shifted more dramatically than at the Supreme Court, + where the 7-to-2 majority that adopted Roe dwindled with each new Reagan appointment, leaving a deeply divided bench. Just how divided will be apparent when the court hands down its decision on Webster, probably this summer. The case grew out of a 1986 Missouri law that in a nonbinding preamble asserts that life begins at conception. The law forbids abortions by doctors or hospitals that receive state funds. Doctors who get public money would be prohibited even from mentioning abortion to their patients...
...lower courts have struck down portions of the law. In November the Justice Department surprised many people by jumping into the Webster case to propose that the Supreme Court use the occasion to reverse Roe. While a reversal cannot be ruled out, few court watchers expect it just now. Supreme Court Justices usually prefer to muster a sizable majority behind highly controversial decisions, as they did in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the pivotal -- and unanimous -- 1954 school-desegregation case...
Another possible approach would be to disallow abortions beyond an earlier point in pregnancy, based on the assumption that medical advances permit the fetus to survive outside the womb at an earlier point. A provision of the Missouri law at issue in the Webster case requires doctors to perform tests to determine the viability of the fetus before an abortion can be performed after the 20th week of pregnancy...
...most abortions are already illegal, it is ; still nearly impossible to save those born before the 23rd week. Doctors question whether they will ever push viability back to a point much earlier than that. Until then, fetal lungs are not sufficiently developed. According to a brief filed in the Webster case by the American Medical Association, "the earliest point at which an infant can survive has changed little" since Roe was handed down...