If the Women’s Health Protection Act were enacted, Pennsylvania’s 24-week limit on abortion would be invalidated because it does not include a mental-health exception and allows abortions to be performed later than 24 weeks only when the mother’s life is endangered or to prevent the “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”
As Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee said at the time, the Women’s Health Protection Act “would invalidate nearly every provision of the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act, including the prohibition on performing abortion after 24 weeks except in acute medical circumstances, which was used to prosecute Gosnell. Abortion until birth would be explicitly protected, as long as a single physician asserts that it would protect ‘health,’ including emotional health.”
Although the overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress, including those running for president in 2020, support legislation overriding state restrictions on late-term abortion, the overwhelming majority of American voters do not: A recent Gallup poll found that only 13 percent of Americans think that abortion should be generally legal in the third trimester.
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