Justice O'Connor was the fifth vote to uphold the time-honored principle, which bears repeating, of separation of church and state. There was real wisdom in the decision of our forefathers in writing a Constitution that gave us an opportunity to grow as such a diverse nation, and we should never forget it.

If we do nothing, as the Republicans suggest, we're going to see health care costs reach a point where small businesses can't afford it and families can't afford it. We're going to see people turned down from pre-existing conditions. We're going to find the Medicare doughnut hole - a gap in coverage that's going to hurt a lot of seniors.

Hard to imagine 40 years ago people could be convicted of a crime, fined, sent to prison for using the most common forms of birth control.

We see it in attempts on Capitol Hill to impose gag rules on rules on doctors on what they can say to their patients about family planning. And we certainly see it now with an effort by the government to tap our phones; invade our medical records, credit information, library records and the most sensitive personal information in the name of national security.

I have thought about this issue of abortion time and again. It is not an easy issue for most people. I came to believe over the years that a woman should be able to make this agonizing decision with her doctor and her family and her conscience, and that we should be very careful that we don't make that decision a crime except in the most extreme circumstances.

Let me tell you, the first president to recognize the state of Israel was Harry Truman, a Democrat. And every president since, Democrat and Republican, have stood closely with Israel.

In my lifetime, it's the Supreme Court, not Congress, that integrated our public schools, that allowed people of different races to marry, and established the principle that our government should respect the value of privacy of American families. These decisions are the legacy of justices who chose to expand American freedom.