I was surprised to see a photo posted yesterday by a typically hostile pro-abortion news source as wonderfully exemplifying the modern-day pro-life movement.

Pro-woman/pro-life

Kudos to Cosmopolitian, for while its article unsurprisingly blasted the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision overturning Massachusetts’ buffer zone law, it took the high road and properly portrayed pro-lifers standing outside the court as the ruling was read, and really, the pro-life movement as a whole, which is young, wholesome, and in this case shady-chic! Click all photos to enlarge…

When viewing the photo above I couldn’t help but recall this photo of pro-choice protesters during Wendy Davis’s filibuster of a late-term abortion ban in Austin, Texas, a year ago, via MSNBC/Associated Press, hardly pro-life bastions…

Read the background for this case here.

Today, in a unanimous ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Massachusetts’ buffer zone law, which banned pro-life advocates from entering a 35-foot restricted-speech zone around the entrance of abortion clinics. Read the decision here. Details, from USA Today:

The decision united Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s four liberals, who said the distance improperly removed demonstrators from public sidewalks and spaces. The other conservative justices would have issued a more sweeping verdict, striking down the ban on grounds that it targets abortion opponents’ specific point of view….

Although the court had upheld an 8-foot buffer zone in Colorado in 2000, the Massachusetts law passed in 2007 went 27 feet farther.

UPDATE: All decisions for today have been released, and this one wasn’t included. We await Thursday.

10:04a: An important Supreme Court decision is anticipated, either in a few minutes or Thursday morning, on a case of significance to pro-life activists. Abortion proponents are also watching for this decision closely. So I’m giving you a heads-up and backdrop.

by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN, and Kelli

We welcome your suggestions for additions to our Top Blogs (see tab on right side of home page)! Email Susie@jillstanek.com.

• Americans United for Life is glad that a higher court upheld the Fifth Circuit Court’s ruling on Texas’ abortion clinic regulations:
  

  “Women in Texas will now be protected from abortion industry misuse of life-ending drugs and will be provided greater protections from deadly events inside under-regulated, under-monitored and under-supervised clinics, run by profiteers,” said Dr. [Charmaine] Yoest. “I’m not surprised that an all-woman panel of judges understood the nuances of laws designed to protect women.”

by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN, and Kelli

We welcome your suggestions for additions to our Top Blogs (see tab on right side of home page)! Email Susie@jillstanek.com.

• Can they stop the inevitable? Americans United for Life discusses how SCOTUS is trending  on abortion related cases:

  The Cline case “illustrates momentum for overturning the abuses of Roe. Multiple cases are advancing toward the Supreme Court as it has signaled its willingness to consider the impact of its unrestricted abortion policy on women and their unborn children,” said AUL’s Dr. Charmaine Yoest.

by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN, and Kelli

We welcome your suggestions for additions to our Top Blogs (see tab on right side of home page)! Email Susie@jillstanek.com.

• At National Review Online, Wesley Smith wonders why Planned Parenthood  has to close so many clinics in Texas due to the new law requiring the abortionist on call to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles:

  If abortion was really only 3% of PP – as the organization claims – would a safety restriction of this kind really force 12 PP clinics to close?”

  If they were serving women for routine medical needs, STI testing and giving out free birth control, this would not be needed. Time to get your talking points freshened up. It’s all about abortion, abortion, abortion.

All of this is making abortion rights advocates nervous, because the restriction was struck down, and to revisit it brings into question what might be permissible around medication abortion restrictions. ~ Elizabeth Nash of the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute on the US Supreme Court’s decision to review an Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision striking down a 2011 […]

UPDATE 9:22a: philipklein tweet: “SCOTUS: ‘The Medicaid expansion thus violates the Constitution’– says states have choice on participating in expansion.'” SCOTUSblog tweet: “Expansion of Medicaid is constitutional (key), but States can’t be stripped of funds for not complying with expansion provisions.”

UPDATE 9:17a: The individual mandate will become a tax. Taxpayers will still be forced to pay for abortions. SCOTUSblog tweet: “From the Court: The mandate max [may?] be regarded as a tax. ‘That is sufficient to sustain it.'” philipaklein tweeet: “SCOTUS: Mandate ‘may reasonably be characterized as a tax.’ It survives.”