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(AP) - Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had
surgery Thursday for pancreatic cancer, raising the possibility
that one of the ideologically divided court's leading liberals -
and its only woman - might have to curtail her work or even step
down before she had planned.

      Ginsburg, 75, has been a justice since 1993. She has been
increasingly vocal in recent years about the court's more
conservative stances, especially after the appointments made by
President George W. Bush.


      Pancreatic cancer is often deadly, although the court said
doctors apparently found Ginsburg's growth at an early stage.


      In 1999, she had colon cancer surgery, underwent radiation and
chemotherapy, and never missed a day on the bench. Statistics
suggest this could be a tougher fight.


      Ginsburg had the surgery at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer
Center in New York. She will remain in the hospital for seven to 10
days, said her surgeon, Dr. Murray Brennan, according to a release
issued by the court. The hospital had no comment.


      The justices hold their next private conference on Feb. 20 and
return to the bench from their winter break on Feb. 23.


      President Barack Obama expressed hope for her speedy recovery,
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday, and offered
his thoughts and prayers.


      Ginsburg is only the second female justice in the nation's
history. The other was Sandra Day O'Connor, who retired in 2006,
and Ginsburg has lamented being the only woman on the court.


      In the spring of 2007, she vented her frustration with the
court's increasingly conservative tone by writing two sharp
dissents that were made even more notable by her decision to read
from them in the courtroom.


      Objecting to a decision that upheld a nationwide ban on an
abortion procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion,
Ginsburg said the ruling "cannot be understood as anything other
than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by
this court - and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to
women's lives."


      A short while later, the court threw out a discrimination suit
by Lilly Ledbetter, a longtime Goodyear supervisor who was paid
thousands of dollars a year less than her male peers. 

"In our
view, this court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the
insidious way in which women can be victims of pay
discrimination," Ginsburg said.


      She urged Congress to change the law to allow lawsuits like
Ledbetter's. Just last week, Obama signed the change into law.


      Ginsburg was born in New York City. She's a lover of opera and
is perhaps personally closest on the court to her ideological
opposite, Antonin Scalia. 

The justices have vacationed together - a
photo in her office shows the two atop an elephant - and routinely
mark New Year's Eve with an elaborate meal prepared by their
spouses.


      Ginsburg was a federal appeals court judge in Washington before
President Bill Clinton appointed her. She served as a lawyer for
the American Civil Liberties Union before that and argued six cases
before the high court.


      The new cancer was discovered during a routine, annual exam late
last month at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. A
CAT scan revealed a tumor measuring about 1 centimeter across at
the center of the pancreas, the court said.


      The court offered few details about the operation or her
anticipated course of treatment.


      Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly cancers. Nearly
38,000 cases a year are diagnosed and overall less than 5 percent
of patients survive five years.


      The reason: Fewer than one in 10 cases are diagnosed at an early
stage - like Ginsburg's appears to be - before the cancer has begun
spreading through the abdomen and beyond. That's because early
pancreatic cancer produces few symptoms other than vague
indigestion.


      Even when caught early, surgery for pancreatic cancer is
arduous. Doctors typically remove parts of the pancreas, stomach
and intestines. Radiation and chemotherapy are common after
surgery.


      Ginsburg's prognosis depends on a number of factors, including
whether the tumor, despite its small size, had begun spreading to
the lymph nodes, and what specific type it was. 


Most are
aggressive, although a small proportion of patients have what Dr.
John Marshall, a pancreatic cancer specialist at Georgetown
University Hospital, calls "quieter ones."


      "We want to be in that early group so we can have the surgery
and have a potential chance at cure, but it is a big operation and
a disease that does tend to spread even very early," he cautioned.


      Even those few patients who qualify for surgery seldom are cured
by it. So chemotherapy is standard to extend survival, which is
still only about 20 percent at five years for people diagnosed in
early stages.


      Studies are under way to try to find better therapies. Among
them: testing if an immune therapy can block the return of tumors
that contain a specific genetic mutation.


      Brennan, her doctor, is a leading specialist on pancreatic and
stomach cancers and has helped to build a computer program and
database of thousands of patients with sarcomas, or soft-tissue
tumors, that help to predict their survival chances for at least 12
years after diagnosis.


      Brennan was chairman of Sloan-Kettering's surgery department
from 1985 until June 2006 and is past president of the American
Surgical Association.
     

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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has
undergone surgery for pancreatic cancer, apparently at an early stage.

Ginsburg has pancreatic cancer

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