Fordham University professor Charles Camosy argues in the Daily News that the creation of an artificial placenta in which gestating babies can be maintained pre-viability will have a major impeding impact on abortion law. From, “The Coming Abortion Earthquake:”
But a scientific advance could soon shake its very foundations. One of those foundations, legally and morally, is the viability of the fetus — or what we call her when the topic isn’t abortion: the baby. (Ever hear of a “fetus bump”?)
In their 1973 Roe ruling, the justices said abortion should be broadly legal before the prenatal child can live outside her mother, but could be broadly restricted after this time. In 1973, viability came in the third trimester. But with today’s technology, viability is at 21 weeks, five days. And dropping.
Technology could drop that time dramatically:
Let’s be conservative and posit that within 10 years, an artificial placenta will knock back viability to 12 weeks. This means, under the legal framework of Roe, states could restrict abortion beyond 12 weeks.
They could try. But color me doubtful that this gambit would succeed–particularly if Hillary Clinton is the next president and appoints two or three Ruth Bader Ginsberg clones.
The law will never require a woman who wishes to abort to transfer the fetus to an artificial womb as a condition to ending her pregnancy. That would be to coerce a woman into a medical treatment. But that isn’t what Camosy is talking about.
I also don’t think the technological ability to keep fetuses alive in such an environment would affect the time when the law could restrict the legality of abortion based on “viability.” Indeed, given current political trends, I doubt that will continue to be a line that can be drawn.
Roe is under attack from two directions, not just the pro-life side. Indeed, abortion supporters are moving very quickly to move the foundation of the abortion license from privacy–Roe v. Wade’s justification–to equal protection for women.
The latter view precludes any limit on abortion because the absolute right not to have baby is deemed by these advocates as necessary to women achieving full equality in the workplace and society.
If equality becomes the justification, the right to an abortion will become the right to a dead fetus–regardless of the gestational age of the unborn baby or the technological abilities to save his or her life in an artificial womb.
The artificial placenta will save babies from miscarriage. But I doubt they will have any impact on the abortion issue.