Washington – The Supreme Court set the stage for a major fall showdown over abortion Tuesday when the justices agreed to decide whether Congress can ban so-called partial- birth abortions nationwide.
It’s not new territory for the court, which in 2000 split 5-4 when it struck down a similar state ban because it lacked a health exception for women.
But Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who voted with the majority in that case, has been replaced by Justice Samuel Alito, whose views on abortion are expected to be more restrictive.
The case could be the first in which Alito, with other court conservatives including new Chief Justice John Roberts, helps chart a more restrictive trajectory for the court’s handling of abortion laws.
The case doesn’t directly address Roe vs. Wade, the controversial 1973 ruling that struck down anti-abortion laws. But its outcome could indicate whether the court might allow limits on abortion that would affect the ease with which abortions can be obtained.
“Almost certainly on the table here is an awful lot more than the federal partial-birth ban,” said David Garrow, a constitutional law expert who has written extensively about abortion.
Not only might the court eliminate the need for a health exception, Garrow said, but it also could reconsider case law that blocks the enforcement of abortion laws when any part of them is unconstitutional.
Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the court’s decision to hear the case “is a dangerous act of hostility aimed squarely at women’s health and safety.”
Jay Sekulow, the chief counsel of the anti-abortion American Center for Law and Justice, welcomed the court’s decision.
“We are encouraged that the justices will determine that the government does have a vital and compelling interest in preventing the spread of the practice of abortion into infanticide,” he said.
The procedure at issue is one of the more contentious aspects of the abortion debate. The two sides disagree even on what to call it.
Abortion-rights advocates bristle at “partial-birth” or even “late-term” abortion, saying the procedure, which doctors call an intact dilation and extraction, is almost always restricted to instances in which it’s medically necessary.
Abortion opponents prefer the more charged terms to highlight what they call the procedure’s gruesome nature. It involves the killing of a fetus that’s fully formed and, in some instances, partially delivered.
