Thanks to the Philadelphia Inquirer (which characterizes as "activist" a decision that declines to invalidate a measure which has always enjoyed broad and bipartisan support):
I'll forego my lament about the "last acceptable prejudice" . And, what's irritating about the cartoon is not only its claim that it is as Catholics -- i.e., because they are Catholics, and not because they think, as intelligent and engaged lawyers, that the Constitution does not (and, of course, it does not) disable legislatures entirely from regulating a particularly gruesome abortion procedure -- that the five Justices who voted to uphold the ban. What is, for me, most striking (and demoralizing) about this cartoon (and about similar "chill wind blowing from Rome" cartoons, blog posts, op-eds, that are already all over the web) is that it suggests something very depressing about the state and future of debate about moral questions.
It is, increasingly, thought to be enough to discredit an argument or position -- any argument or position -- merely to note that the person who makes it is a religious believer, and to write off any moral argument with which one disagrees as "religious." (This practice, of course, does not run both ways: arguments against torture, the death penalty, race discrimination, and income inequality are "secular"; arguments against partial-birth abortion or the creation of embryos for research are "religious.") It appears, increasingly, that arguments whose trajectory is not in line with the standard liberal / autonomy / choice line are not only rejected, but declared not to be permissible arguments.
Even in Justice Ginsburg's dissent, she took the time to complain that there was something improper, and threatening, about the majority's use of words like "abortion doctor" and "unborn child"; but, of course, the use of these words represents an argument. To rule out the words is to rule out, as illegitimate, the argument they reflect.
