At the New York Times editorial page, they’re reaching for the smelling salts, in an editorial that reads like it was written by one of Justice Ginsburg’s clerks. At the more moderate Washington Post, they’re not panicking yet, but they’re worried. And as though it were a profound criticism, the Post points out that yesterday’s “result is most easily explained by a change in the court’s membership.” Yes, a change from a justice who believes in the rule of judges (O’Connor) to one who believes in the rule of law (Alito). In contrast to the Times and the Post, the Wall Street Journal’s editors have a balanced perspective on the implications of the ruling.

Most entertaining of all, perhaps, is Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, who smacks Justice Kennedy pretty hard for what she detects as the sentimental paternalism lurking in his opinion for the Court. Lithwick has sharply criticized Kennedy’s flights of pseudo-poetry before even when she likes his results, and it must be said that there are obiter dicta aplenty in his Carhart opinion, including this line (much reviled in left-wing commentary I’ve seen): “Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child.” But here’s the most jaw-dropping line in Lithwick’s article: “It’s hard to fathom why Kennedy has so much more sympathy for the women who changed their minds about abortions than for those who did not.”

Lithwick imagines she can tell that Kennedy is more sympathetic to the one group than the other. I can’t fathom why she thinks she knows that. But suppose she is right. Maybe it’s because Justice Kennedy is beginning to remember where babies come from, and what they are.