May 17, 2021 5:29 p.m.
It’s not just the Supreme Court’s recent jerk towards the right that makes its grant Monday of a major abortion case such a big deal. It’s how the justices went about deciding that they were going to wade into the issue.
The court waited several months to decide what to do with the lawsuit, a legal challenge to Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. And when the justices finally said they would review an appeals court decision striking down the law, the court teed it up in an extremely open-ended way.
“It’s a very big deal. And one of the reasons is the range of possibilities is wide,” said Walter Weber, senior counsel at the conservative American Center for Law & Justice, which is supporting Mississippi as a “friend of the court” in the case.