SCOTUS opens for business

The Supreme Court of the United States has begun the new term on the traditional first Monday in October. Yesterday, four of the five Catholic justices attended the annual Red Mass in Washington, (the Red Mass is for Catholic lawyers, White Mass for physicians, which is this month also). They need to be fortified for the arguments they’ll face soon.

What’s on deck for the Supreme Court this term?

The U.S. Supreme Court term that begins today requires the justices to tackle the divisive subjects of abortion and race in school admissions.

Specifically, partial birth abortion, which is hard to believe is even arguable in a civilized society. But it made it this far.

Among the most high profile cases are two challenges to the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. Though President Bush signed it into law, it was blocked by lower courts. They found its lack of an exception to protect a woman’s health to be unconstitutional.

That’s a smokescreen that continues to work, for some reason. Part of that reason is politics and media, part is how it’s litigated….but that, for another time.

Congressional supporters of the ban said the law would stop late term abortions in which doctors partially deliver a fetus then collapse its skull. After examining medical evidence, they chose to provide no health exceptions, finding that the procedure was never medically necessary. (emphasis added)

“I think when you’re talking about the partial delivery of a child and then that child’s life is exterminated, that’s where that line can be drawn,” says Jay Sekulow, a conservative legal activist and supporter of the restriction.

It’s mind-boggling that anyone can still be arguing to allow that infanticide. And even more so that the argument has made it up through the courts to the highest justices in the land. If anything should be banned, this procedure is it.

The Bush Administration is urging the court to uphold the ban, submitting a legal brief that says the law “simply eliminates a disfavored and rarely used late-term abortion procedure.”

But women’s groups say the ban is so vaguely worded that it would also restrict a commonly performed abortion procedure used during the second trimester of pregnancy, long before a fetus would be viable on its own.

So ‘viability’ is the determining factor in protecting human life from murder? Define viability. What about when a leader….say, Ariel Sharon right now…is incapacitated due to severe health problems. This argument applies at both ends of life, though some folks use it selectively.

Here’s some more of their argument.

“This is really an attack on one of the central principles of Roe v Wade, which is to protect women’s health and to ensure that women can make choices about abortion procedures pre-viability,” says Priscilla Smith of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Roe v. Wade is meant to protect women’s health? Read this. And bookmark this and this. This rhetoric is getting exhausted in an informed republic. And speaking of that, the second half of Smith’s quote above is another smokescreen, because overhwhelming evidence now proves most of the women who get abortions don’t feel they have a choice. And the abortion movement keeps going to court to block ‘informed consent’ bills, so that women coming to abortion clinics won’t have to be bothered by the information about the procedure.

This ban on partial birth abortion came up before the Supreme Court before.

Six years ago, the court struck down a nearly identical ban, from Nebraska, by a 5-4 ruling — with Justice O’Connor casting the deciding vote.

Ironically, the same is true of the affirmative action case the Supreme Court will be hearing this term.

While the court’s previous rulings have dealt with college admissions, the latest cases involve public schools that use race in deciding whether students can attend the schools of their choice.

In the courts most recent affirmative action decision, in 2003, the justices ruled that colleges could consider race in student admissions as a measure of increasing campus diversity, which is found to have educational advantages.

It was another 5-4 decision, with O’Connor casting the deciding vote.

So what will this court likely do in these cases? We’ll find out after they get down to business tomorrow.

Because the court’s first formal day of the term is also the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the justices will not convene in the courtroom to hear oral argument until Tuesday.

They’re making a clean start. Let’s hope true justice really does prevail going forward.