This AP article today on the Supreme Court term refers to the Supreme Court’s partial-birth ruling by asserting that “the court for the first time banned an abortion procedure.” Does the AP’s Supreme Court reporter really not understand that it was Congress that (by bipartisan majorities) passed the federal ban on partial-birth abortion and that the Supreme Court, far from banning anything itself, ruled merely that the federal ban survived the facial challenge to its constitutionality? Or does the reporter think that this distinction is too subtle for his readers?