‘Fetal Viability’ in Supreme Court Abortion Cases: Probing the Boundary between Medicine and the Law
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The landmark case Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the U.S. However, it only did so up until the point of ‘fetal viability’, after which the State may prohibit abortion in the interest of protecting ‘potential life’. Roe defined ‘fetal viability’, a concept taken from neonatal medicine, as “the potential to live outside the mother’s womb, albeit with artificial aid,” specifying gestational age as the only relevant factor. As I will demonstrate, this egregiously simplified definition fails to represent the nuanced, medical reality of the issue. This thesis investigates the following three research questions: (1) How is the concept of ‘fetal viability’ scientifically and medically constructed? (2) How has the concept of ‘fetal viability’ been understood and deployed in Supreme Court cases from Roe v. Wade onwards? (3) How does ‘fetal viability’ function as a boundary object between medicine and the law, and what conflicts result from the distinct assumptions and requirements of each discipline? To answer these questions, I analyze various medical sources and key Supreme Court abortion cases in order to perform an interdisciplinary STS analysis of ‘viability’ as a boundary object. I find that ‘viability’ depends on numerous factors other than gestational age and is conceptualized in terms of morbidity and mortality statistics. One cannot generalize ‘viability’ to a single gestational age for all fetuses, and it is antithetical to medical practice to do so. The Roe Court understands ‘viability’ to be a medical fact that draws a clear line between ‘viable’ and ‘non-viable’ fetuses. This interpretation breaks down in later cases as the need to actually implement the ‘viability’ standard forces the Court to reckon with the medical reality of the issue. Furthermore, Roe’s use of the ‘viability’ criterion leaves the constitutional right to an abortion vulnerable to the tides of scientific advancement. The Court failed to recognize that the different assumptions and requirements inherent to the fields of law and medicine would result in disparate conceptualizations of ‘viability’, making ‘viability’ a concept underpowered for the legal weight it was intended to bear.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | June 2020 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Yankelevich, Beatriz Sarah |
|---|
Subjects
| Subject | Science Technology and Society |
|---|---|
| Subject | fetal viability |
| Subject | viability |
| Subject | abortion |
| Subject | Roe v. Wade |
| Subject | Planned Parenthood v. Danforth |
| Subject | Colautii v. Franklin |
| Subject | Webster v. Reproductive Health Services |
| Subject | boundary object |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Yankelevich, Beatriz Sarah. (2020). ‘Fetal Viability’ in Supreme Court Abortion Cases: Probing the Boundary between Medicine and the Law. Unpublished Honors Thesis. Stanford University, Stanford CA.
Collection
Stanford University, Program in Science, Technology and Society, Honors Theses
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- byankele@stanford.edu
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