So, I received a question about my personal opinion as to what the Supreme Court is going to do with abortion in the next couple of years. Rather than add this as a comment to an earlier post, I thought I'd make it into a full-fledged post instead.
Okay. First, the case that the SC has taken already (the one mentioned in the previous post over the federal partial birth abortion ban). Here's my current SC math (that is if nothing on the high Court changes and no one on the high Court finds a heart - we're off to see the wizard...). As far as the partial birth abortion ban is concerned, I can see them upholding it unless they get hung up on the state's rights issues (since this is a federal law). Since Justice Kennedy, who is emerging as the swing vote on this topic after Justice O'Connor's retirement voted against allowing partial birth abortion, I can see him voting with the conservatives on this issue. However, this case will not, in my opinion, give the court a chance to really revisit the central holding in Roe v. Wade.
In other news, South Dakota has just passed a bill that basically restricts all abortions. The bill has a narrowly drawn exception for the health of the mother (narrowly drawn because it does not include mental or psychological health, as does the German exception to the ban on abortion). If this law gets to the Supreme Court (which many experts are predicting because the law seems to have been passed to force the High Court to revisit Roe and its progeny (Casey and some other cases, including, but not to an extreme extent Ayotte), I think that a 5-4 Court will strike down the law.
On the side of allowing abortion nearly burden free are: Justices Ginsberg, Stevens, Souter, and Breyer.
On the side of disallowing abortion (and probably overturning Roe) are: Justices Scalia and Thomas (for sure), Alito we can assume (because he wrote the dissent in Casey in the third circuit), and Roberts we can probably assume.
However, Justice Kennedy is a toss up in this situation. However, my intuition and belief is that Kennedy would vote against the law because he helped write the opinion in Casey, reaffirming the central holding of Roe.
Okay, so, those are my thoughts on the Supreme Court's abortion probabilities (I don't know that I'd make any bets based on my thoughts, though).
3 comments:
Hmmmm... I wonder who that person was that asked you this question. I feel good now - I have been linked by Kevin's blog as well as the inspiration for a post on your blog. Huzzah!
I'm sorry - I should have mentioned....Justin asked me the question that prompted this blog post. So, everyone can thank him for tapping into my brainpower for the answer to the question ;).
Justice Kennedy was a swing vote long before O'Connor retired. He's more likely to vote with Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter, and Breyer than O'Connor was. Someone did all the math, and that's how it turned out. He's more conservative on abortion, so people see him as more right-leaning than her, because that's such a hotbutton issue, but it's not representative of his greater tendency to swing left than she ever had.
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