Goodbye Sandra Day
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Abortion, Supreme Court
Looks like the SCOTUS doesn’t want to touch the abortion hot potato right now.
Hmm, I wonder why…
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 - The Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that the lower courts were wrong to declare a New Hampshire abortion law unconstitutional in its entirety. Instead, the justices said, the lower courts should look for a less drastic way to repair the statute’s flaws.Abortion-rights advocates have attacked the New Hampshire law, which demands that parents be notified before a teenager ends her pregnancy, because in their view it fails to provide adequately for exceptions to protect the health of the mother in medical emergencies that are not life-threatening.
In sending the case back to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, the justices avoided a sweeping decision.
And Sandra fires a parting shot as the swing vote on the court.
“We do not revisit our abortion precedents today, but rather address a question of remedy,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote at the outset, in what could be her last opinion.Justice O’Connor said the circuit court and a federal district court “chose the most blunt remedy” by invalidating the law entirely. “They need not have done so,” Justice O’Connor wrote.
The decision has been eagerly awaited by people on all sides of the abortion debate and by officials in the many other states that impose some restrictions on teenagers seeking abortions.
She will be missed.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 18th, 2006 and is filed under Abortion, Supreme Court. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 18th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
This is hilarious!!!! I love it. The midas touch of abortion advocates can turn a any holding, short of an explicit overruling of Roe, into gold.