??? He's been voting consistently liberal. Please explain how the abortion issue makes conservatives hypocrites?
How was this decision "liberal"? The Constitutional right at stake was being made subject to an arbitrary Louisiana law that, according to the record established by the lower court, would likely have shuttered two-thirds of the state's abortion facilities.
How would you react to a state law (say an arbitrary strict liability requirement) that would force most of a state's gun stores to close? You'd scream and make the same argument found persuasive by the Court in this case - that the state law imposed an arbitrary burden aimed at limiting the exercise of a Constitutional right. That's because the "undue burden" test is a fundamentally conservative test, requiring the state to show the efficacy and narrow scope of a proposed restriction on YOUR Constitutional right.
So of course the Louisana case was rightly decided from the perspective of an individual seeking to exercise her Constitutional right. As Roberts pointed out, the State of Louisiana did NOT raise in this case the Constitutionality of Roe v. Wade. The right itself was not at issue, just the right of a state to deny the right on a whim in the name of "safety" utterly not proven.
Folks here would have hailed this decision had it that facts been a state restriction on gun rights. And that's where my charge of hypocrisy lies. Rights for me but not for thee. Indeed, the Heller decision is itself on shaky grounds having only been decided by a 5 -4 majority. What a breath of fresh air it would be for a Justice who had voted against Heller to now recognize that it represents precedent that deserves respect under the doctrine of stare decisis.
There are two types of "conservative" judges. The first is the activist kind, seeking to impose an ideological vision on the community, and the second is the kind that recognizes the limited role of the judicial branch and respectful of precedent. Roberts is the latter kind, and I wish all judges, liberal and conservative alike, were to follow his lead.