In April, scientists achieved
a major breakthrough that could one day drastically improve the fate of babies born extremely prematurely. Eight premature baby lambs spent their last month of development in an external womb that resembled a high-tech ziplock bag. At the time, the oldest lamb was nearly a year old, and still seemed to be developing normally.
This technology, if it works in humans, could one day prove lifesaving for the 30,000 or so babies each year that are born earlier than 26 weeks into pregnancy.
It could also complicate—and even jeopardize—the right to an abortion in an America in which that right is predicated on whether a fetus is “viable.”
In a 1983 decision, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor argued that
Roe vs. Wade was on a “collision course with itself,” because improvements in technology would make it possible for a fetus to continually be viable earlier in the course of a pregnancy. In some cases, today, a fetus can now survive outside the womb at
22 weeks, two whole weeks earlier than at the time of
Roe vs. Wade.
“In 1990 a woman maybe could have an abortion at 25 weeks, but in 2020 perhaps it will be 20 weeks,” said Cohen. “There’s a problem when an abortion that would be legal in one decade is not in another under the Constitution.”
http://gizmodo.com/how-new-technology-could-threaten-a-womans-right-to-abo-1797339090