A few additional observations (numbered serially from my Part 1 post):
4. The Louisiana law that the Supreme Court has temporarily blocked from going into effect would require abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a hospital located within thirty miles of the clinic where they do abortions. In the grand scheme of things, laws like this ought to be of third-order importance at best. (Indeed, both the Fifth Circuit’s opinion below and Louisiana’s argument in favor of the law being allowed to go into effect turned on how little impact the law was likely to have on the provision of abortion.) Instead, Louisiana ought to be able to enact and enforce a general ban on abortion, subject to the limited exceptions it sees fit to adopt. But, of course, the illegitimate Roe/Casey regime continues to make that impossible.
5. There is no obvious “best path” to overturning Roe and to restoring abortion policy to the democratic processes. Nor, much as he might wish otherwise, does the Chief Justice have much control over which cases will be teed up for the Court’s consideration. In particular, the fact that it takes only four justices to grant certiorari means that the four liberals can force the Court to review opinions they don’t like. And ditto for the Chief’s four conservative colleagues.
6. Pending before the Court for action is the state of Indiana’s certiorari petition (which I discussed in this post) that presents the questions (1) whether a state may require health care facilities to dispose of fetal remains in the same manner as other human remains (i.e., by burial or cremation); and (2) whether a state may prohibit abortions motivated solely by the race, sex, or disability of the fetus. I hope very much that the Court grants review on both questions.