A Supreme decision
A closely divided U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the first nationwide ban on a specific abortion procedure, restricting abortion rights in a ruling on one of the nation’s most divisive and politically charged issues.
Try to grasp the importance of this decision.
By a 5-4 vote, the high court rejected arguments challenging on various grounds the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act that President George W. Bush signed into law in 2003 after its approval by the Republican-led U.S. Congress.
The decision marked the first time the nation’s high court has upheld a federal law banning a specific abortion procedure since its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 that women have a basic constitutional right to abortion.
In a defeat for abortion rights advocates, the court majority with two Bush appointees upheld the law adopted after nine years of hearings and debate. The law has never been enforced because of court challenges.
The majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy rejected arguments that the law must be struck down because it imposes an undue burden on a woman’s right to abortion, it is too vague and too broad.
If not for the sweeping ongoing coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre, the media would be all over this story, in full ‘stop the presses’ mode, unraveling the issue and unpacking its signigicance…which is huge.
The fact that Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion is significant in and of itself. It should come as no surprise, even to the pro-abortion activists who thought they could count on Kennedy on abortion issues. They shouldn’t have thought that on partial-birth abortion, because he already voted this way last time around, when the 5-4 vote went the other way but Sandra Day O’Connor was the swing vote. This time it was Justice Alito.
This case highlights how absolutely critical elections are for the presidential power of appointing Supreme Court justices. This is a tremendously important reminder of that, and it will certainly influence the direction and tenor of the upcoming debates in the presidential campaigns, within both parties. The Court’s repeated 5-4 rulings on issues critically important to social conservatives will certainly generate lively questions and revealing answers in those debates.
I’ll continue covering this here in the Forum going forward, as well as any other venue I get, including tomorrow morning on Relevant Radio’s Morning Air program at 8 am CST.
Meanwhile, over at National Review Online, Kathryn Jean Lopez has some early comments as well as a link to the decision, and I’m really glad to hear her say something I’ve been saying for years as well – note how the media refer to this as “the so-called ‘partial-birth’ abortion ban”. So, what do they call the abortion of a child in the process of being born, with most of his/her body already in the physician’s hands except for the head, which is about to be pierced in order to kill the child? Sorry, “late term” just doesn’t work.