The U.S. Supreme Court could decide by mid-January whether to hear Nebraska's petition to allow a state ban on a controversial late-term abortion procedure.

The court is scheduled to review several petitions Friday, including Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg vs. Dr. LeRoy Carhart, who performs abortions in Bellevue. On Jan. 18, the court will release a list of the cases it plans to hear.

If Stenberg vs. Carhart is among the selected cases, arguments could be presented to the court as early as April, said Margie Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy in Washington, D.C.

The court also could take a number of other actions, including rejecting the case or postponing action on it.

Court observers have been watching the Nebraska case because it is the first of several late-term abortion bans to be considered by the justices. If the case is heard, it could help determine the degree to which states can, or cannot, restrict a woman's right to end a pregnancy.

Nebraska's ban of the late-term procedure that opponents call "partial-birth" abortion was struck down in September by a federal appeals court. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled that the Nebraska law "would prohibit in many circumstances the most common method of second-trimester abortion" along with the controversial third-trimester procedure.

At the same time, the 8th Circuit struck down similar abortion bans in Iowa and Arkansas. Iowa, like Nebraska, has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court's ruling and uphold the ban. But because Iowa filed its petition just before Christmas, its case hasn't yet been set for review.

Nebraska, in its petition, has asked the court to consider several issues, including whether:

The state's abortion ban should be narrowly construed to apply only to the controversial late-term procedure that is known medically as intact dilation and extraction, or D&X.

"Partially born human beings" are recognized as people under the 14th Amendment.

Abortion is a legislative, rather than judicial, matter.

The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy has filed its own brief in the case, calling Nebraska's positions "meritless." The state, according to the center, is seeking a review of its ban in the hope that the court, despite recent decisions, will overturn the Roe vs. Wade ruling that protects a woman's right to an abortion.

However, the center added, the case may be worthy of Supreme Court review to establish that Nebraska's ban, and others like it, are unconstitutional. The center asks that this be done without further arguments or briefs being presented to the court.

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