Professor Randy Beck (University of Georgia School of Law) has written a series of terrific articles exploring the “viability” line created in Roe. Wade. Here is a link to his recent article entitled “Fetal Viability and Twenty-Week Abortion Statutes.” The article is well worth a careful read.
Here is his conclusion:
“For over four decades, the Supreme Court has enforced a rule concerning the duration of abortion rights that has never been justified in constitutional terms. By the standards of Casey, in the absence of a principled justification, the viability rule is ‘no judicial act at all.’ The Court should take the opportunity afforded by the new wave of 20-week abortion statutes to revisit the duration of abortion rights. Moving away from viability as the controlling line in pregnancy would further legitimate state interests and begin to address the most extreme element of the Court’s abortion jurisprudence.”