"The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear its first major abortion case since 2007..."

"...one that has the potential to affect millions of women and to revise the constitutional principles governing abortion rights," writes Adam Liptak in the NYT.

The court’s decision will probably arrive in late June, as the presidential campaign enters its final stretch, thrusting the divisive issue of abortion to the forefront of public debate. Other major rulings — on affirmative action, public unions, contraception coverage and possibly immigration — are also expected to land around then.

But it is the new abortion case, however it is decided, that is likely to produce the term’s most consequential and legally significant decision....

The constitutional law doctrine, from 1992, forbids the state from imposing "unnecessary health regulations that have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion." Given the personnel on the Court, it doesn't seem likely at all that the doctrine will change, only that it might be somewhat hard to apply the doctrine to the regulations the state came up with:

The case concerns two parts of a state law that imposes strict requirements on abortion providers.... One part of the law requires all clinics in the state to meet the standards for “ambulatory surgical centers,” including regulations concerning buildings, equipment and staffing. The other requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Officials in Texas said that the contested provisions were needed to protect women’s health. Abortion providers responded that the regulations were expensive, unnecessary and intended to put many of them out of business....

Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which brought the Texas challenge, said officials in Texas had used “deceptive laws and regulatory red tape” to block access to abortion.... “There would be no licensed abortion facilities west of San Antonio,” the challengers’ brief said. The only clinic south of San Antonio, in McAllen, it added, would have “extremely limited capacity.”

I predict that the Supreme Court see an undue burden here. Isn't the law really, mostly a way to deter women from having abortions? It will be interesting to be pushed into thinking about abortion more than usual in the coming election year. Whether the abortion case is the "most consequential" case — more than "affirmative action, public unions, contraception coverage and possibly immigration" — it fits in a set of issues that are politically hot and that drive a wedge in a place that makes it hard for Republicans to keep people like me who can be won over on economic and security issues. And so, I'd say that Democrats should be happy about the line-up of politically hot cases in the Supreme Court.