Slabber said:
Well the extent to which that is the case is what I've been trying to establish.
This whole story is premised on South Dakota trying to do something different.
Can anyone sum up the federal law in a simple proposition?
How many weeks is legal?
The federal government has a stake in this because abortion is one of the 'privacy' rights.
States regulate medical procedures except to the extent that they violate some constitutional premise or premise of federal law.
States can regulate abortions to the extent that they do not create an 'undue burden' (a sadly meaningless phrase in terms of judicial review, used exclusively for abortion law) on that privacy right.
Roe established a trimester system. 1st trimester, the states could regulate nothing. Second trimester the states could place some limits the right. Third trimester, no abortions at all. This was scrapped in the 1980s in Casey v. Planned Parenthood, in which the court said the states could regulate abortions at the point the foetus becomes viable. Even then, there must always be protections for at least the mother's health. What does 'viable' mean? feck all. No one really is sure.
Informed consent (and in most states parental consent, although the Supreme Court hasn't gotten a chance to rule on this yet), spousal notification, and a number of other whacky schemes to limit or name-and-shame women have been struck down by the courts over the years since Roe.