Senator (and Doctor) Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, just asked Judge Sotomayor whether a woman 38 weeks pregnant, having discovered a birth defect in her unborn child, could legally obtain an abortion so late in her pregnancy.  The judge said that she could not "answer in the abstract," and that it would depend on what restrictions on abortion were in place in a particular state.

This answer suggests Sonia Sotomayor is either woefully ignorant of the state of constitutional law since Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton in 1973, or she knows it perfectly well but does not want to lay it out in public view.  For the truth is that ever since January 22, 1973, when Roe and Doe were decided, any woman has been legally able to obtain an abortion at any stage of pregnancy, whether her life or health was truly at stake, for any reason she may have, so long as she can find a willing physician to perform the abortion.  That's the "abortion on demand" regime that has been left unaffected by every subsequent decision, including the 1992 Casey ruling with its new "no undue burden" standard, and the upholding in Carhart II of the federal ban on the particular method called partial-birth abortion.  So contrary to Judge Sotomayor's answer to Sen. Coburn, it does not at all depend on what a state attempts to do to prohibit certain abortions.  The states simply can't prohibit abortions outright at any stage of pregnancy, no matter the reasons they are sought by the women who want them.

The fact that Judge Sotomayor either doesn't know the truth of the abortion-on-demand regime, or knows it and won't state that truth, is very alarming indeed.  Either way, we are not watching a worthy future Supreme Court justice at work.