The Supreme Court on Tuesday considered a Republican attorney general’s bid to defend a restrictive Kentucky abortion law, with some liberal justices sounding skeptical that a lower court was right to reject that request to intervene.
The case is not the only abortion-related battle that the court, stacked 6-3 with conservative justices, is set to consider this term. The court already waded into the polarizing issue when it voted 5-4 not to block a Texas law banning most abortions after as early as six weeks of pregnancy. And the justices will hear arguments Dec. 1 in a pivotal case challenging the right to an abortion before fetal viability established by Roe v. Wade.
The Kentucky law, H.B. 454, would largely ban abortions performed with the “dilation and evacuation” procedure, the most common method used for second-trimester pregnancies. It was signed into law in 2018, but a district court declared it unconstitutional and an appeals court upheld that ruling.
