WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court said yesterday it would take up a new abortion case this fall, raising the political stakes just as the court faces the possibility of replacing ailing Chief Justice Rehnquist.

The justices, in agreeing to review a parental notification law from New Hampshire, showed surprising zeal to take on a divisive subject – especially considering the uncertainty of the court’s future and the partisan fighting in the Senate over President Bush’s nominees for federal judgeships.

The last major Supreme Court abortion case splintered the justices 5-4. A similar split could occur again, with or without Chief Justice Rehnquist, with additional drama outside the court.

“It is a bold step to take the case, bold in a political sense,” a constitutional law professor at Pepperdine University, Douglas Kmiec, said. “It may well be the court’s way of reminding the president there’s a lot at stake in a Supreme Court vacancy.”

Chief Justice Rehnquist, 80, has thyroid cancer and was seen being wheeled yesterday into the Capitol, apparently for medical treatment. A Rehnquist retirement would give Mr. Bush his first vacancy on the Supreme Court, and abortion would be the flashpoint in the debate over a replacement.

“Boy it does make for an interesting summer – potential chief justice retirement, the filibuster fight, and the Supreme Court delving into the abortion issue once again,” the chief counsel for the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, Jay Sekulow, said. “This is the first order of business for a new justice. It wouldn’t just be hypothetically talking about Roe v. Wade.”

The American Civil Liberties Union lawyer handling the new case, Jennifer Dalven, said: “We are welcoming the opportunity to put to rest any lingering questions about whether a woman’s right to an abortion is entitled to full constitutional protection.”

Chief Justice Rehnquist has opposed abortion rights but has not been able to persuade his colleagues to roll back the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, made when Chief Justice Rehnquist had been on the court just a year.

The case that will be argued near the end of 2005 does not deal with the legality of abortion, but a victory for New Hampshire on parental notification that could give states more flexibility to make it harder for women to get abortions. The court is clarifying the legal standard that is applied when courts review the constitutionality of abortion laws.

In its last major abortion decision in 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that state abortion laws must provide an exception to protect the mother’s health. Justices at the time reasoned that a Nebraska law, which banned so-called “partial-birth” abortions, placed an “undue burden” on women’s abortion rights.