Chip, chip, chippin' away.

The Supreme Court has taken its first long-anticipated whack at a woman's right to reproductive choice, and by extension at each of our rights to conduct our personal affairs, including accessing medical treatment, privately. Hotline On Call has reaction from both Democratic and Republican Presidential aspirants (as usual, we're right and they're wrong). Credit Senator Obama with nailing the underlying threat and identifying the battle ground for privacy advocates in the near term.

"I am extremely concerned that this ruling will embolden state legislatures to enact further measures to restrict a woman's right to choose, and that the conservative Supreme Court justices will look for other opportunities to erode Roe v. Wade, which is established federal law and a matter of equal rights for women.”

More than equal rights for women, of course, Roe v. Wade is a limitation on the invasive powers of government that affects us all, but beyond that, Obama is spot on. Look for a landslide of new restrictions from Republican controlled legislatures emboldened by this decision. This kind of law wouldn't get through, hell, wouldn't get a hearing from, the Democratic Congress, but the GOP will make an end run around the will of the people through their packed courts. Americans who value their liberty and their privacy are challenged to a new level of vigilance and activism at the state level.

Of course, the reason that the new restrictions approved by the court don't include protections for the life and health of a mother is that the procedure being prohibited is very rare, typically undertaken on an emergency basis specifically to protect the live and health of the mother. Eventually, one of those mothers will die as a result of this legislation and this decision. There will be plenty of hands to smear with the her blood.