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"It means that there wasn't 4 votes to hear it. >>

Is that what Rehnquist did too? every time a case came to his court he would base whether or not to hear the case on how the anticipated vote would be?"

No, what the poster meant is that there is no right to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court; parties must petition for a writ of certiorari. In order to grant a writ of certiorari, 4 justices must vote to hear the case. Since Judge Thomas had stayed the ruling by the circuit court, I assume that he then voted to grant cert. Even if both Scalia and Roberts also voted to grant cert, it would still result in there not being enough votes in favor of the writ of certiorari, and Roberts was forced to declare that the Supreme Court would not be hearing the case. Of course, we do not know which justices voted to grant cert (justices rarely publish dissents in cert denials), but given the track record of Kennedy, O'Connor and the 4 liberals, I would guess that all 6 of them voted against granting cert and that there was nothing that Thomas, Scalia or Roberts could do.

So we do not know how Roberts voted in the Missouri abortion case. We'll have to wait and see how he votes when the Supreme Court actually hears an abortion case. I just hope that Justice O'Connor has been replaced by then, hopefully by someone who is known to be a strict constructionist, not a question mark such as Harriet Miers. Here's what I hope happens with the Miers nomination: http://auh2orepublican.blogspot.com/2005/10/way-out-of-harriet-miers-mess.html

Remember, Coleus, a judge can be 100% pro-life, but that does not mean that he or she will rule the right way in every abortion case. Only if we know that the judge would strictly interpret the Constitution can we be sure that he or she will allow states to ban abortion, or allow Congress to legislate under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment to give the unborn 14th Amendment protection. See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1507026/posts?page=70#70