As I noted last night (or early this morning, if you prefer) the ban on abortions in South Dakota went down by a sizable margin.  This morning I’m hearing that parental notification laws, which would have required that parents be notified should their child get pregnant and seek an abortion, went down in Oregon and California.  So it is in a somewhat charged political atmosphere that the Supreme Court takes up for review the federal partial-birth abortion ban today.

This will be the first major abortion case to become before the apparently pro-life Alito and Roberts.  Now I’m no constitutional or judicial scholar, but could we see the high court rule on whether or not there is a right to an abortion?

The argument being put forth by the pro-abortion advocates (the cases being heard are Gonzales vs. Carhart and Gonzales vs. Planned Parenthood) is directly predicated upon their being a “right” to an abortion in our Constitution.  They say that because that right exists, the partial-birth abortion procedure (an abhorrent practice where a child is dragged half out of the mother’s womb so that it’s skull can be crushed) cannot be made illegal.  Just like women who shoot their children while still in the womb on their due dates cannot be held as murderers.  Because killing unborn children is a right.

So could the Supreme Court completely undermine that argument by reversing itself on Roe vs. Wade and declaring that there is no Constitutional right to an abortion?

One can hope.

Certainly the stage seems to be set for a ruling pro-lifers will like.  Alito and Roberts, while as yet untested on the issue, seem to be no friends of abortion.  Thomas and Alito are the same.  The swing vote would come down to Justice Kennedy, and when the Supreme Court previously reviewed (and struck down) a ban on partial birth abortion in Nebraska he wrote a strong and highly emotional dissent against the majority opinion.  Would Kennedy be on board for overturning Roe completely?  Is a reversal of Roe even a possibility from this case?

Judicial experts more learned then I would know better, but either way this is an important case to keep an eye on.