On Wednesday, March 23, 2011, Idaho and Kansas both approved similar bills in their respective senates that would ban abortions after 20 and 21 weeks of gestation, respectively, except in situations where the mother’s life is in jeopardy or facing serious injury. The bill is expected to be passed in Idaho when it is sent to the House for approval and Kansas Governor Sam Brownback is expected to be signing their similar bill into law very soon. Titled the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” in Idaho, both bills have come about because of medical evidence that pain can be felt by an unborn child after 20 weeks of development. Similar bills were approved in Missouri and Oklahoma last week and in Nebraska last year.
Not everyone is in favor of these recent Unborn Child Protection Acts, however. They claim that these acts violate a previous Supreme Court ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which gives women the right to have abortions up until the fetus can survive realistically out of the womb, which is usually around 22 or 23 weeks.
If the new laws are approved in both Idaho and Kansas, then any doctors that perform abortions after the 20th week in Idaho and the 21st week in Kansas would be subject to prosecution, but the woman having the abortion after the specified week would not receive any penalty.