in 2016 he voted with the courts liberal justices to strike down a texas regulation that made it more difficult for doctors and clinics to provide abortionskennedy was not a reliable vote for abortion rights he only voted to strike down a couple of abortion restriction laws but he was reliably in favor of treating abortion differently as a protected right under the constitution said david s cohen a law professor at drexel universitya newly conservative supreme court with a replacement for kennedy could say in any one of a number of cases that are pending right now that the standard has changed we are now evaluating these laws just like any other with a rational basis test and it would mean that states could go ahead and regulate abortion however they want mr cohen saidmore than anything said maya manian a professor at the university of san francisco school of law justice kennedy was seen as a holdout against a wholesale evisceration of roe and a rare conservative voice on the court for narrowly tailoring restrictions to reproductive health access including access to contraceptionwith kennedy gone we could see the broad scope of reproductive access through various means sharply scaled back ms manian said a lot of civil rights are now at grave riskbeyond individual cases justice kennedys absence will fundamentally redefine the calculus of abortion cases for lawyers on both sides ms ziegler said in the past they would tailor their arguments to the sole justice whom they viewed as a deciding factor in such casesas long as kennedy was the swing vote there wasnt even really much of a point in asking the court to overturn roe now were kind of in a brave new world she said the question now is who are you talking to whos the swing vote who do you need to win over its a complete gamechanger