I agree with Andy’s Corner comments regarding Roe. Competing positions on Roe also represent competing judicial philosophies (most easily crystallized in the differences, say, between an Antonin Scalia and a Ruth (International Law) Ginsburg) that animate the judge wars between the parties. That said, however, (and to stretch metaphors to their maximum tolerances) within such wars abortion equates to a Battle of the Bulge, Operation Cobra, Inchon, etc—a pivotal engagement that dictates the direction of the remainder of the war, if not it’s outcome. Moreover, within the Left’s broader Roe philosophy (replete with penumbras emanations, etc. that are used to justify, as Justice Thomas put it, “the faddish notions of the cognoscenti” ) , nothing marshals their troops like the defense of abortion. It is the most vivid example of the demarcation between ” Living, Breathing Constitution” types and ” Inanimate Textualist (or Originalist)” types.