Interesting (and important) case going to Supreme Court

Get ready for an ethical/moral/constitutional battle at the Supreme Court. A few days ago the High Court granted certiorari (they agreed to hear the case) to Planned Parenthood v. Gonzales, 435 F.3d 1136 (9th Cir. 2006). This case was brought by PP as a challenge to the constitutionality of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The District Court agreed and ruled in favor of PP; the Ninth Circuit affirmed; and now the Supreme Court will hear the case. You can read the whole Ninth Circuit opinion here (warning: 64 pages long), but the basic constitutional arguments are:

1.The PBAB Act imposes an undue burden on a woman’s right to choose to terminate pregnancy before viability because it creates a substantial risk of criminality for virtually all abortions performed after the first trimester.

2.The Act is unconstitutional vague because the use of unrecognized medical terms inhibits fair notice to physicians and encourages arbitrary enforcement.

3.The failure to include a health exception in unconstitutional.

You can NEVER predict where the Court will come down on any issue, but you can be certain of one thing: Both sides of the abortion debate will be trumpeting this as a very important case and there will be a lot of attention on how the newly-formed Roberts Court will decide these types of decisions.

And remember one other thing: the Ninth Circuit has the highest percentage of their cases overturned by the Supreme Court among all the circuits. (From a 2004 study: “Over the past four Supreme Court terms, the Ninth Circuit has been reversed more than any other court in the nation. Overall, cases from the Ninth Circuit constitute a whopping one-third (33.1 percent) of the Supreme Court’s reversals of federal appellate decisions. Of the 81 Supreme Court opinions in cases originating from the Ninth Circuit, the High Court reversed or vacated the Ninth’s decisions in 60 of them, for a 74.1 percent reversal rate. Once again, the number of Supreme Court reversals arising from the Ninth Circuit dwarfed the next three most frequently reversed circuits combined: the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Circuits together were only reversed 51 times through written slip opinions during the last four Supreme Court terms.”)