They’re not talking points. I suggest you follow up your reading by looking at the constitutional law arguments here, not anyone’s talking points on the right or left. If you accept the arguments of Bork, Scalia and Thomas (and soon enough Alito and Roberts), Roe should be overturned because the Constitution gives no right to privacy. That right was found in our very own Griswold v. Connecticut (1964), which overturned our state law prohibiting birth control by married women. Bork explicitly stated that Griswold was wrongly decided; the conservative nominees who followed were smarter and hide their beliefs. If you look at the arguments of many of the anti-abortion advocates, they also wish to limit access to contraceptive information and contraceptive methods. Given the track record of the prior Republican Congress, I don’t doubt for a second the potential for some future Congress to pass similar bans, have the Roberts Court uphold them, and then filibuster repeal when the country comes to its senses and throws the bums out. We’re seeing it right now.

Judging from how well the gov’t has been running this land for the last six years, I will worry for womanhood.

So why is there a slippery slope with abortion but not with guns?

I would argue that society has an overriding interest in seeing all of it’s member born. And Democrats should be interested in seeing all of their babies born as well, the Democrat rolls are missing millions due to abortion.

But that’s just my opinion, nothing personal.

And, and keep in mind that tort law was not the best I’ve ever done in a class in my life, my understanding is that the method (of anything) that opens doctors up to the least liability is the generally accepted method – only where there is a new method for something that doesn’t have a scientific basis to back it up could a doctor face liability for doing the medically right thing. Not sure if that is a good or bad rule of thumb….

Also, this is far OT.

Kennedy’s decision virtually begs for a challenge due to the health of the momma.

Secondly, I am dubious that any doctor or patient will be prosecuted for performing a pba if the patients life is in danger.

So, decisions that may protect or compensate one plaintiff might have negative and chilling effects for doctors treating other patients.

This is not really relavant to the issue at hand, but I think there are certainly chilling legal ramifications on both sides that impact the way a doctor approaches a situation.

In this context, docters are not worried about doing the (medically) right thing (in their opinion), they are worried about doing the legally right thing – which could conflict with their opinion of the medically right thing. Since doctors carry med-mal insurance, but would have to actually serve a prison term if they are legally wrong, my fear is that women’s lives will be put at risk by doctors who are scared to go to prison.

One other thing to think about: given that this is a federal law and prosecutions would be done by US Attorneys, there is the real possibility of geographical differences in enforcement. There will be very different pressures on a USA deciding whether or not to press criminal charges against a doctor in say Mississippi than there will be on a USA in say Connecticut.

And while Justice Kennedy is not a lock-step conservative (I’m not sure what descriptive words you would use for him really), he is on this issue (D+E procedures, not abortion in general). Remember, this is not a case where he was with Souter, Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer when the same law came up without an exception for the life or health of the woman. He dissented in that case, arguing that the law should be upheld (with Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist) even though there were no exceptions at all. That case would have come out a different way entirely, and we would have had a similiar law (except for one state, I know) but without an exception for the life of the woman, had Justice O’Connor not been on the court. The only thing that has changed between the two cases is Alito for O’Connor…