In another appeal pending before the court, this one from Indiana, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit struck down a law that makes it a felony for a doctor to perform an abortion if the patient wants to terminate her pregnancy because the fetus has been diagnosed with Down syndrome or “any other disability.” In his opinion, Judge William Bauer wrote that the Supreme Court’s “unambiguous” and “controlling precedent” made clear that before fetal viability, a woman’s right to an abortion was “categorical” and could not be blocked for this or any other reason.

Judge Bauer, a 92-year-old former chief judge of the circuit who was originally appointed to a Federal District Court by President Richard Nixon, expressed no unease about the status quo in a straightforward 20-page opinion. But Judge Daniel Manion, in a concurring opinion, took a very different path. He accused the Supreme Court of making abortion “a more untouchable right than even the freedom of speech.” While the outcome of this case was “compelled,” he said, “it is at least time to downgrade abortion to the same status as actual constitutional rights.”

Judge Manion, named to the Seventh Circuit by President Reagan and long one of the most conservative judges in the country, wrote that “Indiana made a noble attempt to protect the most vulnerable members of an already vulnerable group” but the Supreme Court’s precedents “proved an insurmountable obstacle.” He added: “This court is powerless to change that state of affairs. Only the Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment can do that.”

Indiana’s appeal, Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, arrived at the Supreme Court in October. The justices have taken it up at their private conference eight times and will consider it again at the conference scheduled this Friday. Ordinarily, such prolonged consideration would indicate that the petition has failed to get the requisite four votes needed to add a case to the court’s docket for decision, and that justices who wanted to accept the case are crafting a dissent. But the justices’ conference is the black box of the decision process, and there is no way of knowing what happens there until the word “granted” or “denied” issues from behind the closed door — perhaps, in this case, on Monday.

So-called “heartbeat bills,” which would ban abortion as soon as ultrasound can detect a heartbeat — at as early as six weeks, when the embryo, not yet even considered a fetus, is one-quarter inch long — have received a good deal of public attention. Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi signed one into law last week, and a dozen other states are considering similar measures. These laws are too blatant, presenting too big a target, to catch favor with a Supreme Court that prefers moving toward a desired destination in more measured steps. (See last term’s public employee union case, which reached a radical result after a series of intermediate steps that made that result appear all but foreordained.)

A more likely vehicle for the Supreme Court to use to cut back on the abortion right is another Indiana appeal, which the state filed last month from another ruling by the Seventh Circuit. The appeals court invalidated an Indiana law requiring women to undergo an ultrasound examination as part of the informed-consent procedure at least 18 hours before the abortion. Since Indiana had long had both an informed-consent requirement, during which a doctor must explain the procedure and advise on options if the woman decides to carry the pregnancy to term, and an ultrasound requirement, this law, enacted in 2016, sounds relatively benign.

But as Judge Ilana Rovner explained for the appeals court, the new law would seriously impair access to abortion for many women in the state. While under the old law, informed consent had to be given at least 18 hours in advance, the ultrasound could take place immediately before the abortion. That meant that women could receive the counseling at a clinic near their homes, and then travel at a later time to one of the handful of clinics in Indiana that perform abortions, where they could receive both the ultrasound and the operation. Only the clinics that provide abortions have the ultrasound equipment. So the new law means that women have to make two trips, hundreds of miles for some, because of the requirement of an 18-hour gap between the ultrasound and the abortion. This was a heavy burden without any corresponding benefit, the court concluded; hence, the burden was “undue” and the law was unconstitutional. The law’s only effect, Judge Rovner wrote, “is to place barriers between a woman who wishes to exercise her right to an abortion and her ability to do so.” (Judge Rovner was named to the Seventh Circuit by President George H.W. Bush.)