I don’t get riled up about many things, but a woman’s right to choice is something I am deeply interested in preserving.  The United States has a fourty-year history of upholding the constitutional right of abortion since Roe v. Wade in 1973.  However, our current Supreme Court has decided to uphold the Federal “Partial-Birth Abortion” Ban Act of 2003.  The ban had not taken effect because of lower court’s rulings, but these have been overturned.

In a scathing majority opinion, Justice Kennedy wrote about the implications of abortion’s “ethical and moral concerns.” He said “the act expresses respect for the dignity of human life.”

From the NY Times:

The court did not explicitly overturn any of its precedents, although Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the four dissenters, said the decision was “so at odds with our jurisprudence” that it “should not have staying power.” Justice Ginsburg called the decision “alarming” and said the majority’s “hostility” to the right to abortion was “not concealed.”

Justice Ginsburg has been a long-time advocate of woman’s rights, and the majority opinion is basically a slap in the face.  I feel sorry for her.

This is truly backwards thinking.  Conservatives are all about personal freedom and against government “nannyism.”  But when it comes to abortion, for some reason they feel like they should be able to tell woman what to do with their own bodies.  This is downright insulting, and I hope that this decision forces abortion into the spotlight during the ‘08 Presidential election.

So there.