10-20-18 First Abortion Test Case for the Supreme Court?
First Abortion Test Case for Supreme Court?
News: US News
"Further," Hill continued, "states have every reason and right to prohibit abortions from being performed simply as a means of selecting the race, sex, or physical condition of a child."
Indiana asks Supreme Court to hear case about law banning discriminatory abortions
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INDIANAPOLIS (ChurchMilitant.com) - The attorney general of Indiana is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case on a pro-life law, making it the first abortion test case that could come before the High Court this term. With conservative justices now in the majority after confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, pro-lifers are hoping this might be the case that leads to overturning Roe v. Wade.
Mike Pence, currently the U.S. vice president, signed off on House Enrolled Act 1337 in 2016 when he was Indiana's governor. The law prohibited abortions based on the baby's race, sex or disabilities. It also required burial or cremation of unborn babies' remains.
But Planned Parenthood of Kentucky and Indiana, among others, challenged the law in court, where a district judge ruled the law unconstitutional.
On Oct. 12, Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in.
"Nothing in the Constitution prohibits states from requiring health facilities to provide an element of basic human dignity in disposing of fetuses," Hill said in a press release Monday. "These tiny bodies, after all, are in fact human remains."
"Further," Hill continued, "states have every reason and right to prohibit abortions from being performed simply as a means of selecting the race, sex, or physical condition of a child."
"The right to abortion declared by our Supreme Court protects only the decision not to bear a child at all, not a right to decide which child to bear," he said. "Our nation knows only too well the bitter fruits of such discrimination."
Hill argued that when the U.S. Supreme Court broadly decriminalized abortion in 1973's Roe v. Wade, there was not as much technology in place as there is today to enable a pregnant woman to know the race, sex and potential disabilities of her unborn baby.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Indiana is representing Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky in the case against Indiana's Dignity for the Unborn law. The ACLU's Ken Falk said, "This law ignores long-settled precedent from the Supreme Court that a woman, not the legislature, gets to decide whether an abortion is the right decision for her and her family."
Falk characterized the law as "yet another attempt by Indiana elected officials to take that decision out of a woman's hands."
These tiny bodies, after all, are in fact human remains.
Pro-lifers hope the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the case. Indiana Right to Life said on Facebook on Monday, "It's official! The State of Indiana has appealed the 2016 Dignity for the Unborn law to the Supreme Court! Now pray the Supreme Court agrees to hear it."
But the nation's highest court receives thousands of recommended cases each year, and only hears oral arguments for roughly 80 of them.
This recent news from Indiana is an example of why, in this year's November midterms, it will be important to pro-lifers to elect pro-life politicians to state legislatures and governorships.
If pro-lifers want to chip away at legal abortion in America, an important part of doing that is taking court cases related to abortion to the U.S. Supreme Court. The hope would be that the justices might rule in favor of pro-lifers and weaken the pro-abortion precedents of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
With Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, both nominated by President Donald Trump, now on the bench of the nation's highest court, some pro-lifers are optimistic — though not without reservation — about the possible end of Roe v. Wade.
The Left viciously opposed Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court, and abortion was one of the key issues behind their opposition. Doctor Alan Keyes wrote, "As the Blasey Ford drama unfolded, however, it became clear that the elitist totalitarians who promote so-called 'abortion rights' were determined to divert the confirmation process into an effort to advance the assault against our self-government."
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