Today's New York Times' Editorial leads the way in pushing the panic button:

As far as we know, Mr. Kennedy and his four colleagues responsible forthis atrocious result are not doctors. Yet these five male justicesfelt free to override the weight of medical evidence presented duringthe several trials that preceded the Supreme Court showdown.

Dutifully followed by its wholely-owned subsidiary, The Boston Globe:

The five justices of the court majority and the politicians who passedthe law they approved have overruled the best judgment of the doctorswho are most informed on this issue. Politics could trump medicineagain -- unless backers of abortion rights use the ballot box to steerthe country back toward support of a woman's right to end a pregnancy.

Thankfully, The Wall Street Journal is both more realistic ... and, I think, more honest:

To hear the extremes of the abortion debate tell it, yesterday's Supreme Court ruling in Gonzales v. Carhart is the beginning of the end of abortion rights in America. The Christian Coalition declared that "it is just a matter of time" before Roe v. Wade "will also be struck down by the court," while Senator Hillary Clinton called it "a dramatic departure from four decades of Supreme Court rulings that upheld a woman's right to choose."

They're both wrong, but the dueling end-of-days rhetoric shows again how much the Supremes have polarized our abortion debate. In fact, yesterday's 5-4 ruling is narrowly drawn and upholds a federal law that outlaws only a single, late-term procedure that Daniel Patrick Moynihan once described as "infanticide."

snip

The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, by the way, provides an exemption for when the mother's life is endangered. Abortion proponents wanted a "health exception" as well, because in legal practice that has become a loophole allowing just about any abortion right up until actual birth.