Supreme Court Upholds Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

Contrary to what had been said in many quarters, not until Justice Anthony Kennedy actually read from the majority opinion upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act could we know for sure that the swing justice on the Supreme Court had, at least in this case, swung in the direction of life.

The composition of the Court had changed since 2000 when the justices handed down their Stenberg v. Carhart decision overturning Nebraska's law banning partial-birth abortion. Gone was the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a dissenter in Carhart, as was Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who was part of the five-member majority. They had been replaced by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.

And even though Kennedy had dissented in Carhart, he had also made it abundantly clear, in a previous case, that he still affirms the "core holdings" of Roe v. Wade.

Thus it was no sure thing that Kennedy would stay the course in the presence of a newly reconstituted High Court. But he did in a careful reasoned 39-page decision.

There are ten separate stories and editorials in this issue attempting to clarify what there was in Gonzales v. Carhart that evoked from dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg "the legal equivalent" (in the words of Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Greenberg) "of jumping up and down and yelling."

Reduced to its most basic, the 54 decision rendered April 18 was the first time the High Court has upheld a ban on an abortion method since the disastrous Roe v. Wade decision was handed down in 1973.. Justice Kennedy was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Alito, and Chief Justice Roberts.