Comments on: South Dakota: abortion showdown advances

By: Marc Shepherd

Marc Shepherd — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 12:35:23 +0000

I’m afraid I just don’t get the logic of what’s going on in S.D. Even some conservatives have questioned the timing of passing this bill before Justice Stevens retires.

At present, there are at least five votes on the Court for the Casey holding, and there can be no doubt that this bill offends Casey. For all we know, there could be more than five votes, since Roberts and Alito haven’t yet declared their positions since joining the Court. Lest we forget, Justices O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter were all once thought to be anti-Roe. It just goes to show the difficulty of predicting in advance how a Justice will vote. But even in the best case for the conservatives, Casey still commands a 5-4 majority.

Given that background, conservatives have to be hoping that Stevens retires before the S.D. case reaches the Court, and that he is replaced by a Justice hostile to Casey. If Roberts and Alito are also hostile to it, then Casey (and therefore Roe) would finally be overruled by a 5-4 margin.

But that’s like trying to complete an inside straight in poker. Nobody knows for sure that Stevens will leave the Court while Bush is still president, and nobody knows for sure that Roberts and Alito would both vote to overrule Casey. Unless everything goes perfectly, all the conservatives will have for their effort in S.D. is yet another abortion statute declared unconstitutional. What’s the point?

By: Commentator

Commentator — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 04:41:27 +0000

This is bill is a means of scaring Planned Parenthood of South Dakota into wasting its resources and a brilliant signal sent to fundamentalist voters. This is how you defund the Left and boost voter turnout in 2006.

By: federalist

federalist — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 04:09:36 +0000

Doesn’t this case get challenged in the federal courts and doesn’t it get struck down if not at the District Court level then at the 8th Circuit, with a cert. denial?

Query: given (a) widespread support of abortion rights in many parts of the country, (b) the inaccessability of abortions in many areas of the country where the practice is frowned upon and (c) the ability to travel, even if Roe v. Wade were overturned, what kind of effect would that overturning have on the actual numbers of abortions per year in the country?

By: mike liveright

mike liveright — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 02:21:24 +0000

Three questions:

1) If everybody agreed, how fast could this get to the SCOTUS?

2) If there was a general agreement to push this to the court ASAP, then could both sides "cooperate" to push it. All the arguments are already known, and one wonders if any court will look at any of the material put in front of them, so lets get this in front of the court in the next few weeks and get it over with?

3) Given that there may be a third conservative apointment to the court, would both sides want to get a decision soon, or what are the reasons that the sides would want to delay it.