Every time the Supreme Court begins a new session, years of future law are defined and established, invariably impacting your everyday life. But this year, the high court's decisions will be quite different, as the first few critical test cases appear before the new conservatively stacked court.

Perhaps the most important of all of these cases, which could frame social policy for years to come, is the Federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban. Known in case law as Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood of America, the court's test of Samuel Alito and John Roberts will finally come to a head.

When Alito and Roberts were confirmed as justices on the Supreme Court, the belief was that President Bush had rectified years of conservative presidential failures in appointing like-minded justices. The Partial Birth Abortion Ban gives the Bush administration its first real test of these justices — as this is the president's bill and his court — which will either take a stand against "activism" or succumb to the pressure of partisanship.

But, if the Supreme Court chooses to overturn years of abortion law, it will be acting much like the "activist judges" that the Bush administration has decried throughout its presidency.

For those unfamiliar, the Partial Birth Abortion Ban sounds like it's a pretty bad deal, and it's no surprise that even the legislation sounds that way, as it comes from the Legislature that brought you the Clean Air Act and the Patriot Act as well. But semantics aside, this bill actually threatens a woman's right to life and health, not to mention her right to medical privacy.

The administration's bill threatens lawful abortions going back as early as the 12th week of pregnancy. It also fails to include any provision respectful to the health of a woman and consequently, with both inclusions, threatens years of case law.

This case law starts with Roe v. Wade. As Roe defined, the state cannot regulate abortions in the second trimester when the matter was "reasonably related to maternal health." The Court created a timeline of permissible abortions based on trimesters, a decision soon to be overturned by later rulings.

After Roe, the Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey redefined Roe's strict trimester test to implement a balancing act between a woman's choice and the state's interest in limiting access to abortions. Based off of Casey, the more recent and relevant case for the Partial Birth Abortion Ban is Stenberg v. Carhart.

In Stenberg, the Court concluded that partial birth abortion bans — where there was only one exception of protecting the woman's life — was not permissible according to the Constitution.

The court held that such laws must make exceptions for the health of a woman, the very thing that the Federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban fails to do.

However, the Bush administration is asking us to forget this lengthy legal history, and is consequently asking justices to be the very activists they decry, by overturning decisions of the past. Where Casey and Stenberg sought to redefine a rule, Gonzales has the potential to overturn multiple decisions and violate the ethics of the judicial profession along the way.

Although the president's logic relies upon the belief that for abortion to be legally justified it must threaten only the pregnant woman's life, his line in the sand is clearly legally incorrect according to the aforementioned precedent.

Both Alito and Roberts, like the many justices before them, claimed that their goal as a justice would be to uphold stare decisis, or precedent to the layperson. If in acting on Gonzales they overturn this stare decisis, then the president and the Supreme Court can expect to hear the term activist judges coming from an unfamiliar spot: the left.

The very thing that conservatives have held above the left for years could end up serving them in ways of which they have only dreamed. To disrespect precedent in this manner would be wholly unacceptable and the Supreme Court must take steps to not fall into the trap of radically changing its mind on these important issues, especially in such an impulsive fashion.

For Alito and Roberts, this will be a test of the veracity of their statements during their confirmation hearings, lest we not forget their voiced support of precedent, especially if they rule in favor of the ban.

Robert Phansalkar ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in languages and cultures of Asia and political science.