The Supreme Court today agreed to review the constitutionality of a broad federal abortion ban. As we have reported, the Bush Administration asked the Court to grant review of an Eighth Circuit decision striking down this law, the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which was passed by Congress in 2003 without an exception to protect women’s health. The Court has now decided to hear this case in the next Term, which begins in October of this year.
The decision to take this case for review could be a sign that at least some of the Court, with its new members Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, is ready to revisit its abortion precedents and in particular one of the core principles of Roe v. Wade – that the government may not place a woman’s health at risk when erecting barriers to abortion. (It takes four votes to decide to hear a case). After all, there is no circuit split on whether this federal ban is valid -- all three federal circuit courts that have considered the ban have ruled it unconstitutional because it lacks a health exception -- and it was only six years ago that the Court decided in Stenberg v. Carhart that a state law similar to the federal law was unconstitutional because it lacked protection for a woman’s health. But the swing vote in the 5-4 Stenberg decision was Sandra Day O’Connor, who has now been replaced by Justice Alito.
We will know all too soon whether the new composition of the Court is going to mean significant changes in the area of abortion rights.
