Ayotte, Briefly

I don’t have a whole lot to add to the Court’s status-quo-preserving Ayotte decision yesterday. I still think it would be more logical to have struck down the law and permitted New Hampshire to craft constitutional legislation, rather than having the courts read a health exception the legislators clearly didn’t intend into the statute. (This is classic O’Connor, writing a decision that gets praised for “restraint” and “modesty” for no obvious reason.) Still, the must crucial aspects of the case were 1)ensuring that Roe‘s health exemption was preserved, and 2)not applying the Salerno rule to abortion litigation. The decision accomplishes both, so I can certainly live with it.