Are there any indications that the Court will overturn Roe v. Wade?
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a case directly challenging the constitutionality of Roe v. Wade—something which the Bush Administration has already asked for in a couple of cases—were to find its way into the Court’s docket in the next term or two. There have already been two significant partial-birth abortion cases decided by the Roberts Court. This term the federal ban on partial-birth abortion was upheld in Carhart. And last term the Court decided unanimously (in Ayotte) that the lack of a health exception need not invalidate the entire statute, and with it, the ban of partial-birth abortion, but could be redressed with an injunction barring the statute’s enforcement in a case where the woman’s health was in danger. It takes only four votes in the Supreme Court to decide to hear a case. There are certainly four justices who are interested in having a conversation about whether the Constitution guarantees a women’s right to terminate a pregnancy, even if they don’t yet have a fift
