WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- The focus will be on Justice Anthony M. Kennedy this week when the U.S. Supreme Court again takes up the issue of partial birth abortion.
Court watchers say Kennedy is the potential swing voter when the constitutionality of a 2003 law banning the procedure goes before the court on Wednesday, ABC News reports.
This time around there are two new Bush appointees on the bench -- Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.
Six years ago when the high court struck down a similar law in Nebraska, former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor cast the deciding vote.
In that case, Justice Kennedy was in the minority, writing that states should be allowed to eliminate "a procedure many decent and civilized people find so abhorrent as to be among the most serious crimes against human life."
Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice calls the procedure, which can involve partially delivering a living fetus, "gruesome."
Abortion rights supporters say the matter belongs in the hands of medical professionals not politicians.
