Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England

The abortion combatants are headed for the battle field today. Reading on the topic in the MSM, you'd think this was a simple case. And like usual, that is incorrect. The Boston Globe, like usual pushes the topic to spotlight Judge Roberts' stand on abortion. But from here on, we'll ignore them and go to a post at SCOTUSblog on the topic.

Like usual it's complicated. The post gives a brief of the basic arguments to be heard.

Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, which will be argued tomorrow, asks whether abortion regulation statutes must contain exceptions for when pregnancies threaten a womanÂ’s health or life, and if so how narrow those exceptions can be. Perhaps more importantly, the case also raises the question of what hurdle opponents of abortion statutes must clear before making facial constitutional challenges to those statutes. Respondents argue that they should only have to show that the law might endanger the lives or health of some hypothetical women in some hypothetical circumstances; petitioner claims facial challenges should only be allowed if the challenger can show that the law would endanger the lives or health of every pregnant woman, and thus be unconstitutional in every circumstance. Challengers who can only show that a law is dangerous to some women in some circumstances must wait until those circumstances actually arise, and then only have the law declared unconstitutional as applied to them.

It's a long post, but you can scan through and check out the important points. It's quite interesting how these cases have little to do with a right to an abortion, but with other various legal and health standards.