Supreme Court watchers are naming Kennedy as an important swing vote on a key late-term abortion case. Linda Greenhouse wrote in the NY Times Week in Review:
THE Supreme Court, having decided only four cases since the term began in October, has not exactly been living in the fast lane. But the pace is about to pick up.
The coming months will be a testing time for the young Roberts court, including decisions due by early summer on abortion, school integration and environmental policy, with an unusually large emphasis on cases of significance to the business community.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has spoken often of the virtues of a court that speaks modestly and unanimously. Those goals may well prove elusive. The court’s conservative bloc reached out to hear challenges to voluntary integration plans put in place by the public school systems of Louisville, Ky., and Seattle, which had been upheld by lower courts.
If the Dec. 4 arguments were any indication, a majority will overturn student assignment plans that seek to maintain racial balance in systems that struggled for years to achieve it. The outcome is likely to prove divisive both within the court and outside it.
The Nov. 8 arguments in two cases on the constitutionality of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 did not provide such a clear basis for prediction. Instead, they served to showcase Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s position at the center of a court that is closely divided in cases that Justice Antonin Scalia has described as battles in the culture war. Before she retired a year ago, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor held that pivotal position.
Justice Kennedy did not tip his hand during the abortion arguments. But enough other justices tipped theirs to make clear that the first federal statute ever to make an abortion procedure a crime will stand or fall depending on Justice Kennedy’s opinion.
1 comment:
I appreciate all of this dialogue about "when the unborn fetus" is a "person." However, I can't help but ask, "Where is the concern for the young woman or girl (that we know is a person) and her life, whether she aborts OR gives birth?"
This comes from a 48 year old Descendant of American Slaves (DAS) who aborted two children fathered by the same man.
First, as an eighteen year old college student, when my mother made the decision for us. The other at age 24, when this same "college sweetheart", after a seven year, admittedly, rocky relationship, did not want to get married "just" because I was pregnant.
A couple of years later, after I moved across the country and he got locked up for insider trading, he wrote me letter from jail telling me that "a part of him vanished when I aborted our baby." I was stunned! Had he told me that before the procedure....
Needless to say, we both regret decisions we made 20 plus years ago, especially since we both remain single with no children (last I heard). The sad part is, we'd make great parents now, together or apart!
I was "programmed" NOT to be an unwed mother after seeing my parents' reaction when my sister got pregnant at sixteen and I watched her life take a downward spiral until 2006 win she entered court ordered rehab after a stint in jail; I guess he was "programmed" not to get married "just because a woman is pregnant." No shotgun wedding for him! At twenty-four and twenty-five years of age, we both stood by our "convictions" at the expense of our unborn child.
Today, I just know that we all thank God for my 32 year old nephew who was born of a 16 year old, unwed mother. Fortunately, she was blessed with a family that supported her and her child.
Am I pro or anti abortion? After a lot of thought and personal experience on both sides of the coin...I would like to see an age limit for receiving legal abortions. An age restriction, such as: women 21 and older cannot receive an abortion without written consent of the father, unless life-threatening circumstances exist. In addition, before getting an abortion, when the father is known, he should be required to sign documents consenting to the procedure and perhaps, require him to be present.
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