In her posting below, Wendy Long writes, referring to the 1985 memo released today from Samuel Alito to his then-boss Charles Fried:

“Judge Alito’s and Justice O’Connor’s explanations of the law clarify that the radical liberal agenda of utterly unregulated abortion on demand, for all nine months of pregnancy, for any reason, is not mandated by the Constitution or by Roe.”

I have to differ somewhat. The devil is in the adjectives. Change “unregulated” to “unprohibited” (if that is not too awkward a word) and I’m afraid that this is what is mandated, not of course by the Constitution, but by Roe. Various regulations imposing delay, standards of care, information requirements and the like, may be legislated by states concerned about the abortion transaction. But assuming a licensed, willing physician, and a woman who determinedly seeks an abortion, that transaction cannot be prohibited outright by the state at any stage of pregnancy under the Roe regime, whatever ground the Court may have given rhetorically but insincerely to “an important interest in potential life.” Surely the 2000 Stenberg ruling on partial-birth abortion taught us that, and it was merely following out the logic of Roe and its companion case in Doe. Speaking (again) awkwardly but accurately, Roe makes abortion unprohibitable, period.