Justice Sandra Day O’Connor: Ms. Kolbert, you’re arguing the case as though all we have before us is whether to … preserve Roe v. Wade in all its aspects. Nevertheless, [there are] some specific questions in this case. Do you plan to address any of those?

While Justices O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy prodded Kolbert to talk about the details of the Pennsylvania law, Kolbert adhered to her strategy of portraying the statute as a direct challenge to Roe. The go-for-broke tactic is a political gamble: expecting to lose, pro-choice groups want to lose big, so they can exploit abortion as a campaign issue against George Bush. But if O’Connor, the decisive swing vote in a 1989 case that upheld Missouri regulations, has her way again, the court is unlikely to provide abortion-rights advocates with clear political ammunition.

Justice Harry Blackmun: Have you read Roe?

Blackmun’s question was mean-spirited, but the justice is mad. Roe’s author lamented in 1989 that signs of change “are evident and very ominous,” and warned last year that “the votes are there” to overturn Roe.

O’Connor: Now, the provision does not require notification to a father who is not the husband, I take It … Or notice if the woman is unmarried.

Husband notification troubles even some abortion opponents. How can they saddle only married women with this extra burden? The most controversial part of the Pennsylvania law, this is the least likely to survive court scrutiny. The justices may not want to interfere with so-called marital privacy. Or, as O’Connor later suggested, the law might violate the First Amendment by requiring certain dialogue between wife and husband-which could allow the justices to avoid the abortion issue entirely.

Starr: We do not have a position …

Stevens put Starr in a political bind. Starr couldn’t legally defend the notion that a fetus is a person, but he didn’t want to contradict the GOP platform plank that life begins at conception. For Stevens, who supports abortion rights, the issue is critical: if a fetus is a person, it is entitled to constitutional protection. The court would then have to treat abortion as harshly as murder and could require states to pass laws banning abortion. That’s not the issue now, but with challenges expected in Guam, Louisiana and Utah, the justices could face that question as early as next year.