U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act

NYT story here. The decision was 5-4, and this is a situation in which the replacement of O’Connor with Alito probably made all the difference. Accord to the NYT:

”Today’s decision is alarming,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in dissent. She said the ruling ”refuses to take … seriously” previous Supreme Court decisions on abortion.

Ginsburg said the latest decision ”tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.”

She was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens.

The cases are Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood. The opinion is accessible here (thanks to Irene Weiser of Stop Family Violence) and here (thanks to commenter llhinkle). After a preliminary read-through, the scariest sentence in the opinion to me is this one:

The Act’s failure to allow the banned procedure’s use where ” ‘necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for preservation of the [mother’s] health,’ ” Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New Eng., 546 U. S. 320, 327-328, does not have the effect of imposing an unconstitutional burden on the abortion right.

–Ann Bartow

Update: I think C.J. Roberts is really, really, really, horribly and destructively wrong about a lot of things, but dear Goddess, couldn’t we leave his child out of it? Kennedy spends a substantial portion of the opinion describing abortions as graphically and repulsively as possible, part of his “hearts and minds” battle against reproductive freedom for women. Referring to someone’s adopted child with the caption: “John Roberts orders manufacturers to create a greater selection of products for him and his wife to choose from” plays right into his hands.