Excellent news--and dead Scalia wouldn't have made a difference, other than writing a whiny dissent.

The Supremes upheld a law restricting firearm access to domestic abusers as well.

@1 Alito usually does the whining, and he did so in this case. Scalia did more of an off-topic rant.

Too bad the damage has already been done. Women's health services in Texas are already in a shambles. I wish they (the closed clinics) could sue the state for damages.

That's some very good news. Also, I'm very surprised that a person can die during a colonoscopy, especially at a rate of chance 10x higher than abortion.

@1: scalia might have bullied kennedy to vote otherwise. he was scary.

a liberal court is the #1 reason to stop trump.

@5) Yes, but they die with a smile!

@5: most abortions are medical (pills) not surgical. Surgery, including colonoscopy, involves anesthetic and that's what people die from.

Yay! This is awesome news. Lots of states have been trying for decades to chip away at Roe v. Wade, including this odious Texas law. This ruling should stop states from making up bullshit excuses to justify their laws.

Well done, Supremes, even with one short. I thought it might come down to a tie. This ruling means Texas would have lost even if dead-Scalia wasn't dead.

So yes, even if you don't like Hillary much, hold your nose and vote for her anyway, or Drumph will be choosing Supreme Court Justices for the next 4 years. *shudder*

@9: Ah, that's the difference. I didn't know that a colonoscopy involved anesthesia. I figured you got something local maybe, to help with the insertion, but otherwise you were just really uncomfortable for the procedure.

@11, No the procedure itself is easy (particularly after the anesthesia kicks in); the tough part is the preceding 24 hours, which involves ingesting nothing but colon cleanser and crapping more material out of your body than you ever thought possible.

Get dunked on, Texas Republicans!

@8: 90% of what I know about peritonitis I learned from James Herriot's books. And from what I understand, the advent of antibiotics hasn't made the condition much less unpleasant, although it has increased survival rates significantly.

Texas is the absolute worst. Obstacles to abortion AND the Cowboys? What a god-forsaken hellhole.

@11: Some people need to get totally knocked out to do the colonoscopy. Most people get a mix of general and local anesthesia which leaves them in a state of consciousness. but they aren't really "all there." Many people retain no memories of the actual procedure.

@13: Reading James Herriot always made me wonder how the hell any clove hoofed creature gives birth naturally without momma and calf dying horrible deaths.

@9:

Generally colonoscopies don't require full-on anesthesia; rather a mild sedative is administered (which for SOME people is completely ineffective), so the fatality risk would have to be due to some other cause, such as perforation, as @8 suggests.

I'm trying to find a celebration in DC. Help?

The point isn't that colonoscopies are risky, but that abortions are far safer than a procedure we all understand to be very low-risk, despite what anti-choice propagandists want us to believe. The absolute risk of death from both procedures is extremely low, but relative to each other the risk associated with colonoscopies is 10-fold higher.

Consider the mortality rate for abortion vs. childbirth: 0.6/100K vs. 8.8/100K = American women are 14 times more likely to die from childbirth than getting an abortion.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22270…

Great news! Right on, SCOTUS Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and others who voted 5-3 to overturn such a ridiculous "law". Choke on it, Texas Repigs, Samuel Alito, and anyone else who stubbornly and /or violently disagrees with a woman's right to her own healthcare and doctor's confidentiality.

@14: Same as how turkeys survived rainfall without drowning: domestic livestock, bred for docility and milk/meat production, just aren't as hardy as their wild forebears. That said, there is substantial maternal mortality in herd animals even in the wild. It's pretty rough on the system, even for mammals that don't have our complicated and hastily adapted pelvic structure.

@14: Also, I used to think Texas was pretty bad, but now that I live here (about 15 miles south of the Red River) I know that Oklahoma is much worse in practically every respect. It's like the Mississippi of the Great Plains.