Free Republic

The court in Hellerstedt ruled 5-3 to strike down a Texas law that required abortion-performing doctors to be authorized to admit patients at a nearby hospital. Roberts dissented on technical grounds from the majority, which said the Texas law was unconstitutional because its burden on a woman’s right to abortion outweighed any medical benefit. While Roberts’s vote was not decisive in the Texas dispute, he may hold the tie-breaking vote in the Louisiana case. What complicates matters is the fact that the Texas law that the court struck down in Hellerstedt is nearly identical to the Louisiana law now under...

(RNS) On Wednesday (March 2), the most important abortion case since 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. Casey shifted away from Roe v. Wade’s focus on privacy and instead asked whether abortion restrictions were an “undue burden” on women.The court, however, has not been clear about what “undue burden” means.In 2007’s Gonzales v. Carhart, the last significant abortion case, swing voter Justice Anthony Kennedy joined the four conservatives in ruling that laws against partial-birth abortion were not an undue burden. Legal commentators, like CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin, have worried that Kennedy may have signaled...