SUPREME COURT - Refuses Arizona Appeal on Abortion

"Supreme Court refuses to hear Arizona abortion case" PBS Newshour 1/13/2014

The Supreme Court Monday declined to reconsider an Arizona law that would ban abortions at 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The justices, according to SCOTUSblog, refused to hear the case filed by the state of Arizona "without comment and without any noted dissents."

The ban, signed into law by Ariz. Gov. Jan Brewer in April 2012, was overturned by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May 2013.  The lower court ruled that the ban violated previous Supreme Court rulings concerning a woman's constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy up to the time when the fetus was "viable" enough to live outside the womb -- currently considered around 24 weeks.

In the appeal, filed by Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, the state questioned whether the fetus' "viability", taken from the Supreme Court's previous decisions upholding abortion rights in 1973's Roe v. Wade and 1992's Planned Parenthood v. Casey, was correctly used as the only critical factor when deciding on constitutionality.  The appeal also included a reference to evidence of fetal pain and whether the previous precedents in two seminal Supreme Court cases should be revisited considering said evidence.