The US Supreme Court has just upheld an Indiana law that requires abortion providers to treat pre-born babies in the same way adults and children are cared for in burial. The court has basically ruled they cannot be thrown out in the trash.
The ruling is another blow to Planned Parenthood which is the nation’s largest abortion provider. It is not known if the organization will seek more funding from the Democrat-controlled House to pay for the additional burial expenses for pre-born babies.
At the same time, the justices refused to consider Indiana’s effort to ban abortions based on sex, race, or disability. The justices said their decision “expresses no view on the merits.”
Justice Clarence Thomas wanted to hear the case though, writing that the particular Indiana provision promotes “a state’s compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics.”
“He is trying to lay a foundation so the court when it takes up, say the sex-selection ban from some other state, it will have a good foundation to strike down the other side’s arguments to be able to say hey we can prohibit these sort of sex-selection abortions, race selection abortions,” said Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society.
Thomas wrote the court will eventually have to tackle the issue. In his opinion, he specified that all pregnant women were “mothers.”
However, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her dissenting opinion wrote Thomas was wrong to call a woman who has an abortion a “mother.”
“(A) woman who exercises her constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy is not a ‘mother,’ ” she wrote, saying Justice Thomas showed “more heat than light” in his opinion.
According to The Washington Times, Thomas said Ginsburg’s opinion “makes little sense.”
Lila Rose of the pro-life group Live Action responded to the ruling in a tweet saying, “Today’s SCOTUS decision justly upholds Indiana’s fetal remains law, ensuring babies killed by abortion get humane, decent burial. But they rejected deciding on the blocked ban on abortions based on sex, race & disability. No reckoning w/ Roe yet, but I think it will still come.”
She continued, the Supreme Court “can’t pretend forever that destroying a human being in utero is any different than destroying a newborn. Roe was decided by ignorantly dodging the reality that all humans are, by nature, persons. As the court’s composition continues to change, Roe’s days are numbered.”
READ: New York Legalizes Abortion Up To Birth
Meanwhile, lawmakers in Illinois have advanced what could be the nation’s most liberal abortion law.
Supporters say the measure is necessary to counter other states’ actions to restrict abortion and the threat to overturn Roe v. Wade – the Supreme Court ruling that created abortion rights.
Illinois state House Democrats voted to replace the state’s abortion law with a measure that would make abortion a primary right in the state.
According to the Thomas More Society, the bill known as the “Reproductive Health Act” is worse than the bill passed in New York earlier this year and would make Illinois “an abortion destination” for the entire country. Abortions would be allowed on fetuses for any reason and at any time during pregnancy.
Among other provisions, the amended bill requires private health insurance companies that cover pregnancy-related benefits to cover abortions – even late-term abortions.
There are no abortion coverage exemptions for churches, religious nonprofits, or pro-life individuals and small business owners.
The bill even strikes current law that protects parents from having to pay for a child’s abortion when performed without parental consent.
In a statement, the Catholic Conference of Illinois said, “The fundamental premise of the bill is flawed, and no amendment or tweak to the language will change the fact that it is designed to rob the vulnerable life in the womb of any trace of human dignity and value.”