Court to Address Abortion Restrictions

The Supreme Court said yesterday that it will broaden its review of whether a federal law banning a controversial abortion method is constitutional, taking the second case in four months that will reveal whether the court has shifted significantly on abortion rights with two new conservative members.

The court agreed to rule next term on a California case in which a federal appeals court struck down the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, a statute that was a political victory for abortion opponents but that lower courts have been finding unconstitutional.

The court said in February that it would consider a separate case in which a group of Nebraska doctors had challenged the same law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, based in St. Louis, ruled last year that the federal ban is unconstitutional because the law does not provide an exception that would allow doctors to use the abortion technique if a woman's life is in danger.

In accepting the California case, Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America , the court essentially agreed to evaluate a wider range of legal issues that the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit cited last winter when it, too, found the law unconstitutional.

The 9th Circuit found the law posed an undue burden on women because the statute is so vague it could be interpreted to forbid other abortion methods beyond one that is used rarely late in pregnancy. In addition, the 9th Circuit dealt with whether a court could "remedy" the law to permit the procedure when women's health is imperiled, ruling that it could not because lawmakers had deliberately omitted such an exception.

The high court did not say whether it intends to consider the two cases together.

The abortion cases will be the first the court has heard since Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined in February and the second since John G. Roberts Jr. became chief justice last fall. Both men have conservative records and were nominated by President Bush, who favors restrictions on abortion rights, including the "partial-birth" law.

Leading advocates and opponents of such rights said yesterday that the court could use the pair of cases to place significant new limits on women's access to abortion.

"Look, you don't know how anyone is going to rule, but I'm optimistic," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, which supports the ban.

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said she has "a very, very deep fear" that the court will "eviscerate" Roe v. Wade , the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. Without striking down Roe , she said, the justices could rule that restrictions on the procedure no longer need to ensure that women can get an abortion if a pregnancy harms their health.

The court last considered the issue of "partial-birth" bans six years ago, when it ruled, 5 to 4, that a Nebraska statute -- similar to laws in many states that had been adopted during the late 1990s -- was unconstitutional, because it lacked a health exception. The deciding vote in that 2000 case was cast by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whom Alito has succeeded.

The Bush administration urged the court to consider the 8th Circuit case. It recommended, however, that the court hold the California case without ruling until the first one is decided. Eve Gartner, senior staff attorney for Planned Parenthood, which brought the lawsuit in California on behalf of the group's clinics and physicians nationwide, said it had asked the high court to take the case.