BREAKING: SCOTUS Upholds Abortion Ban

Just now getting my hands on the full opinions and dissents, but SCOTUSblog has the rundown on today's opinion as a thumbnail for everyone.

Dividing 5-4, the Supreme Court on Wednesday gave a sweeping — and only barely qualified — victory to the federal government and to other opponents of abortion, upholding the 2003 law that banned what are often called "partial-birth abortions." The majority insisted it was following its abortion precedents, so none of those was expressly overruled. The dissenters strenuously disputed that the ruling was faithful to those precedents.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority in the first-ever decision by the Court to uphold a total ban on a specific abortion procedure — prompting the dissenters to argue that the Court was walking away from the defense of abortion rights that it had made since the original Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 recognized a constitutional right to end pregnancy medically. Roe v. Wade was not overturned by the new ruling, as some filings before the Court had urged….

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking in the courtroom for the dissenters, called the ruling "an alarming decision" that refuses "to take seriously" the Court's 1992 decisions reaffirming most of Roe v. Wade and its 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart striking down a state partial-birth abortion law.

Ginsburg, in a lengthy statement, said "the Court's opinion 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. For the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception protecting a woman's health." She said the federal ban "and the Court's defense of it cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court — and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives. A decision of the character the Court makes today should not have staying power."

More on this as I get time to read and digest the rulings. Please link up commentary that you find useful or compelling on this in the comments below.

Related posts:

1. How the Senate Abortion Language Differs from Stupak
2. SCOTUS: Selecting Justice, A Live Chat with CAC’s Doug Kendall
3. 64 Democrats Voted To Put A Bureaucrat Between You, Your Insurance Provider, And Your Doctor On The Issue Of Abortion
4. Selected Sotomayor Selections: The Good, The Bad, The Totally Not Fiery
5. Anti-Choice Men: The Go-To Source for Abortion Opinion