Summary
This legislation would ban all post-viability abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother or protect the mother from a serious physical injury involving irreversible impairment of major bodily function. The bill would require that before an abortion is performed on a woman who is twenty or more weeks pregnant, the physician must test for viability, and if the unborn child is determined able to survive outside the womb, no abortion could be performed.

Conference Position
The Catholic Conference supports this measure and all similar measures supporting and defending human life from the first moment of creation.

Rationale
It is common misperception that late-term or post-viability abortions are already prohibited in New York State. They are not. While current statute would outlaw abortions performed after 24 weeks of pregnancy, this ban is currently unconstitutional and unenforceable under the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decisions of Roe v Wade and Doe v Bolton. More recent Supreme Court decisions (see Gonzales v Carhart upholding a ban on partial-birth abortions, October 2006) have reaffirmed the government’s “legitimate and substantial interest in preserving fetal life” and opened the door for greater state regulation of abortion to protect human life and preserve the integrity of the medical profession. This legislation responds to the Court’s prodding; it would replace the current sections of the Penal Law and give substance to a genuine ban on third-trimester abortions.

• Public opinion polls consistently reveal that a majority of New Yorkers and Americans support restrictions on late-term abortions. A Gallup poll conducted in May 2007 found 72% of Americans believing that late-term abortions, performed in the last few months of pregnancy, should be illegal. A March 2007 New York Times/CBS News poll found 70% of young Americans believing that abortion should either have stricter limits or should not be permitted at all.
• This legislation is constitutionally sound. It is modeled on laws like Pennsylvania’s which has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
• This bill would save human lives. According to the most recent data from the New York State Department of Health, 2,013 abortions at 20 or more weeks of pregnancy were performed in the state in 2004. Given that viability is generally considered to date from approximately the 23rd week of gestation, many of these abortions would be banned under this bill.