Idaho abortion ban tossed as Arkansas law faces challenge
By Bloomberg News
This article was published March 7, 2013 at 9:02 a.m.
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Idaho’s ban on abortions performed after 20 weeks was overturned by a federal judge the same day Arkansas lawmakers overrode a veto to pass an even more restrictive law abortion rights supporters vowed to fight.
U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill in Idaho on Wednesday granted an Idaho mother’s request to strike down that state’s ban and denied a prosecutor’s request to dismiss the constitutional challenge. Winmill said the state’s law was an unconstitutional obstacle to women.
Winmill cited the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion. He also cited a 1992 decision in which the court found that while a woman’s right to an abortion isn’t absolute, states couldn’t impose an undue burden or a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion.
“The state’s clear disregard of this controlling Supreme Court precedent and its apparent determination to define viability in a manner specifically and repeatedly condemned by the Supreme Court evinces an intent to place an insurmountable obstacle in the path of women seeking non-therapeutic abortions,” Winmill wrote in the decision.
“An outright ban on abortions at or after 20 weeks’ gestation places, not just a substantial obstacle, but an absolute obstacle, in the path of women seeking such abortions,” he said.
The case is McCormack v. Hiedeman, 4:11-cv-00433, U.S. District Court, District of Idaho.
Comments on: Idaho abortion ban tossed as Arkansas law faces challenge
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 14 total comments
Jump to last page >>LR1955 says... March 7, 2013 at 2:57 p.m.
Get your abortion before 12 weeks, or 20 weeks, what ever. I don't understand.... You miss 2 cycles, test your self, have the procedure @ 8 weeks.
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TheBatt says... March 7, 2013 at 3:08 p.m.
Abortion is an obstacle to the RIGHT TO LIFE. There is absolutely NO line, section, or amendment to the US Constitution that grants the right to murder and unborn child - for ANY reason.
The horribly flawed (corrupt?) 1973 Roe decision was begun by a woman who lied (claimed to have been raped as her reason for an abortion). Nothing in her case brought any sweeping questions of privacy. Yet the Court somehow stretched the "right to privacy" (which nowhere appears in the Constitution or Bill of Rights/Amendments) that has been birthed from a poor reading of the 4th Amendment. Indeed - if that Supreme Court ruling were to be taken to its logical conclusion - a woman could, theoretically, murder her 2 month old baby if she starts to have feel her health and sanity are being threatened by parenting an infant. It's simply wrong on so many levels.
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Fdworfe says... March 7, 2013 at 3:36 p.m.
This bit of tomfoolery by Arkansas lawmakers is but a prime example of why people who bother to think at all about such issues are thoroughly disgusted with politics and politicians. These shallow right-wingers wasted valuable time that could have been spent on things that really need to be done instead of making a silly point with a law that is all but certain to be overturned on appeal. Have you ultra-righties no shame at all?
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RiverFae says... March 7, 2013 at 4:50 p.m.
If it's an actual right to LIFE you American Taliban want you would support national healthcare, better educational systems, more public funded child care so women trying to support a child unexpectedly have actual options. Stop trying to pretend life begins when sperm meets egg (especially women who have suffered miscarriages after 12, or even 20 weeks). And embryo is not a baby (until 13 weeks a potential infant is embryo and COMPLETELY non-viable outside the womb unless frozen in a test tube... Which this law may well leave couples TRYING to conceive in trouble - is it an abortion to discard unimplanted embryos now?) Either way, a baby isn't a baby until it's own body can support itself. This isn't like an adult on a ventilator who would recover without the plug pulled. This is like being forced to be dangerously connected to someone else against your will, like a personal human dialysis machine. No one would be forced to do that. Except women in Arkansas now, gee thanks. As for the miss two periods and check that's fine and dandy if you're regular but if you're not that deadline could EASILY slide by before you know.
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Got2Kids says... March 7, 2013 at 5:17 p.m.
RiverFae - "This is like being forced to be dangerously connected to someone else against your will, like a personal human dialysis machine." Seriously? I am pretty sure the law contains an exception for cases involving the health of the mother. Abortion as a matter of convenience is wrong, period. Justify it all you or anyone else wants, it is still wrong and should NOT be a form of birth control. Period.
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nwar says... March 7, 2013 at 5:50 p.m.
Sorry folks, a fetus in the first tri-mester is not a child. Maybe your church teaches you to think that way, but that does not make it so. The woman's right prevail, as they should. You think that's wrong, you try to talk young women out of abortion. Have at it. But you don't get to legislate your religious prejudices.
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BillSmith says... March 7, 2013 at 7:07 p.m.
got2kids...... Ireland had a law containing exception for cases involving the health of the mother. But, the mother died anyway while having a misscarriage at 17 weeks and requested an abortion and the hospital and doctor's would not do it, because they detected a hartbeat. The baby died inside of her and was removed, after which she also died. Care to comment on this case that could happen in Arkansas now.
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NoCrossNoCrown says... March 7, 2013 at 10:11 p.m.
Can the Raper, and his ilk of folks in Arkansas, find a crooked enough judge to uphold this travesty of a law on the federal level??? More and more judges are turning their back on the law and ruling by their political affiliation or on their own personal beliefs....#shameful
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fasttony46 says... March 8, 2013 at 9:57 a.m.
Let's keep this simple! Woman-Abortion... Her Business !
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