https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a...-virginia-push-expand-abortion-rights/581959/
On the 46th anniversary of
Roe v. Wade, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation permitting all abortions until 24 weeks of pregnancy. After that point, the bill asks only that the provider make a “reasonable and good-faith professional judgment” that “there is an absence of fetal viability” or that abortion is “necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.” That last term,
health, is left studiously undefined, a significant omission. It also removes abortion from the state’s criminal code. Cuomo
described the bill as ensuring “a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her own personal health, including the ability to access an abortion,” and said that, as a result, “women in New York will always have the fundamental right to control their own body.”
In Virginia, Democratic Delegate Kathy Tran introduced a bill—with the backing of her party and of Democratic Governor Ralph Northam—that would significantly loosen existing restrictions on abortion in the final three months of pregnancy. Currently, third-trimester abortions are permitted only if three doctors certify that a woman’s health otherwise would be “substantially or irremediably” impaired. Under Tran’s bill, only the physician who would perform the abortion must provide that certification, and the “substantially or irremediably” language is dropped, in favor of a provision that allows for an exception if the continuation of the pregnancy is determined to “impair the mental or physical health of the woman”—a provision that may appear commonsensical, but is in fact intentionally vague.
Health exceptions like these have been used to allow abortions of viable fetuses for reasons other than medical emergencies, relying on the broad definition of maternal health laid out by the Supreme Court in the 1973
Roe companion case
Doe v. Bolton: “All factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age—relevant to the wellbeing of the patient.” Virginia’s law offers an exception for “mental or physical health,” and New York’s simply for “health.” These laws leave the decision up to the person performing the abortion.
