Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: Attempts to limit abortion continue in state legislatures and in national politics.Many proposed restrictions arise from new technologies for visualizing and testing fetuses.This article examines the role that technology has played in past abortion conflict, showing the illusory nature of the belief that technology might dampen the virulence of the debate.It then looks at four recent technologies at the center of abortion controversy: forced viewing of sonogram; earlier survivability of premature newborns; fetal pain-capability before 24 weeks; and early noninvasive prenatal diagnosis.It shows the challenges that each technology poses for existing doctrinal understandings of abortion rights, such as the undue burden test, the 24 week line for viability, and the impermissibility of state inquiry into a woman's reasons for abortion.It concludes with a comparison of the effect of technology on Fourth and Eight Amendment jurisprudence, and shows why changes in abortion technology present a different set of problems.
Author: John A. Robertson
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W752473445