U.S. SUPREME COURT HEARS ABORTION CASE

A Supreme Court argument in a major abortion case on Wednesday yielded few clues about whether the justices are prepared to uphold a Louisiana law that its opponents say would leave the state with only one doctor in a single clinic authorized to provide abortions.

The members of the court who may hold the key votes — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh — focused their questions on whether they were bound by a 2016 decision that struck down an identical Texas law.

The chief justice, for instance, wanted to know if “the results could be different in different states.”

Only Justice Samuel Alito asked questions consistently supportive of the Louisiana law. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch asked no questions.

The court’s four liberal members appeared united in their opposition to the law. Justice Stephen Breyer said the very divisiveness of the societal debate over abortion argued in favor of respect for precedent.

“People have very strong feelings,” he said. “The court is struggling with what kind of rule of law do you have in a country that has both kinds of people.”

“Why depart,” he asked, “from what was pretty clear precedent?”

The arguments were the court’s first sustained consideration of abortion since President Donald Trump’s appointments of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh shifted the court to the right, with a ruling expected in June. The case is very likely to yield an unusually telling decision, one that could reshape the constitutional principles governing abortion rights and ripple through the presidential campaign.

The Louisiana law, which was enacted in 2014, requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. Only two doctors in Louisiana have been able to meet the requirement, the law’s challengers say, and one testified that he could not handle his clinic’s work alone.

In a rare rebuke of a sitting member of Congress, Roberts criticized Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, over remarks made from the steps outside the high court Wednesday that Kavanaugh and Gorsuch would “pay the price” for a vote against reproductive rights.

“Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous,” Roberts said in a statement.

Schumer’s remarks about the conservative judges deepen the political polarization of the nation’s highest court. Last week, Trump said that liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg should “recuse themselves” from any cases involving him or his administration.

Roberts did not comment after Trump made those remarks.