Judge Sotomayor & Abortion

In questioning Judge Sotomayor on Wednesday July 15th, TX Senator Cornyn asked her to explain the following words from a 1996 speech: "change, sometimes radical change, can and does occur in a legal system that serves a society whose social policy itself changes" and "a given judge or judges may develop a novel approach to a specific set of facts or legal framework that pushes the law in a new direction".



Judge Sotomayor responded to this question by saying in part, "I also spoke about the fact that society evolves in terms of technology and other developments, and so the law is being applied to a new set of facts."



Can we conclude from her statement, made under oath, that, based on advancements in technology and developments in medicine presumably, the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, which asserted a woman's consitutional right to abortion at any time during her pregnancy since the fetus is not yet a person, could be seriously challenged and possibly overturned due to "a new set of facts"?



Consider this advice and rhetorical question from OK Senator Coburn, OB-GYN, who pressed her quite a bit on the abortion issue. "And—which bring(s) me back to the technology again. As recently as six months ago, we now record fetal heartbeats at 14 days post-conception. We record fetal brainwaves at 39 days post-conception. And I don't expect you to answer this, but I do expect you to pay attention to it as you contemplate these big issues—is we have this schizophrenic rule of the law where we have defined death as the absence of those, but we refuse to define life as the presence of those. And all of us are dependent at different levels on other people during all stages of our development from the very early in the womb, outside of the womb, to the very late. And it concerns me that we are so inaccurate—or inaccurate's an improper term— inconsistent in terms of our application of logic."



Now I understand that if a state's law defines death but not life, then she would, or should, be bound by that law and not by her feelings. However, suppose a state's law defines both death and life, as the good doctor does; technology now exists to prove it. Also suppose that a woman in that state has an abortion. Would the Roe vs. Wade precedent give her and/or the aborting doctor a pass, or would they have violated that state's law as well as the due process clause of the 5th and 14th amendments?



Which party has more protection under the 14th amendment...the woman and her doctor or the baby? Shouldn't they have the same since it guarantees "equal protection of the law." If the baby is aborted after state law says it's alive, then it was deprived of life without due process.



She claims the interpretation of laws can and will change as "society evolves in terms of technology and other developments." Thanks to the free market, our society and its technology have evolved to confirm that viable life exists much earlier in a pregnancy that once thought. If heartbeat and brainwaves aren't indicative of life, what is? Would this be enough for her and a majority of her fellow justices to overturn the most contentious court decision of our day?