ABORTION SCIENCE DENIERS:  Jonathan Tobin has a piece in Commentary pointing out the obvious anti-science position of defenders of late-term abortions.

[A] new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine illustrates that those decrying the effort to oppose late term abortions as a right-wing “war on women” are not only on questionable moral ground but also disregarding scientific facts about premature babies. According to the Journal, it is now clear that babies born at 22 or 23 weeks into pregnancy have a decent chance to survive if given treatment. Those born at 23 weeks are even more likely to live with half doing so without significant problems. This is good news for families but as even the New York Times tacitly admitted in its story about the report, it is bad news for those on the left who have been fighting efforts in state legislatures to ban late term abortions.

Toobin doesn’t discuss it, but advances in care for very premature babies has pushed back the point of “viability”–survival outside the mother’s womb–that the Supreme Court has designated as its Maginot Line in its abortion jurisprudence since Planned Parenthood v. Casey.  As the point of viability moves backward–now around 22 weeks’ gestation–the States’ ability to ban abortions expands. It has not expanded so far, however, as to sustain laws that ban all abortions after 20 weeks’ gestation, as the Ninth Circuit recently held in Horne v. Isaacson, with the Supreme Court denying review.