Federal judge strikes down Kentucky ban on gruesome dismemberment abortion procedures

Life Site News ^ | 05/13/2019 | Calvin Freiburger

[SeekAndFind]

May 13, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Kentucky cannot ban the second-trimester abortion procedure infamous for dismembering babies in the womb, U.S. District Judge Joseph McKinley declared Friday in a ruling state leaders plan to appeal.

Last year, Kentucky Republican Gov. Matt Bevin signed HB 454 into law, which bans the dilation and evacuation (D&E) abortion procedure. D&Es are more commonly known as “dismemberment abortions” because they function by tearing a preborn baby apart limb by limb. The left-wing American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) quickly sued, and on Friday McKinley sided with them, the Louisville Courier Journal reports.

McKinley, a Bill Clinton appointee, based his ruling on the fact that the ban limits abortion options starting at around 14 weeks, which is well before the U.S. Supreme Court’s “viability” threshold, despite the fact that it still allows second-trimester abortions via other methods.

Pro-abortion activists have objected to the “dismemberment” label as inflammatory and misleading, but the abortion industry itself has effectively admitted its accuracy. The National Abortion Federation’s own instructional materials describe “grasping a fetal part,” then “withdraw[ing] the forceps while gently rotating it” to achieve “separation,” and notorious late-term abortionist Warren Hern has written, “there is no possibility of denial of an act of destruction by the operator [of D&E procedures]. It is before one’s eyes. The sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current.”

Defenders also claim dismemberment abortions are the safest second-trimester procedure available (for the mother), but pro-lifers suspect abortionists actually prefer D&E abortions because they can fit more into their schedule, and therefore make more money. “Dismemberment abortion facilitates fetal harvesting,” Kansans for Life executive director Kay Culp told LifeSiteNews last year. “Clinicians experimenting on aborted baby parts don’t want their research tainted by drugs, and, they want fresh organs – packed for shipping within minutes of death.”

"Laws like this are part of an orchestrated national strategy by anti-abortion politicians to push abortion out of reach entirely,” declared Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, an attorney with the ACLU’s so-called Reproductive Freedom Project. “Today’s decision holds — in no uncertain terms — that Kentuckians and the care they need come first."

"We profoundly disagree with the court’s decision and will take this case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary, to protect unborn children from being dismembered limb by limb while still alive," said Bevin spokeswoman Elizabeth Kuhn, confirming the governor’s commitment to appealing the ruling.

The issue may already be working its way to the nation’s highest court; in February, a coalition of 21 states asked the Supreme Court to review and uphold Alabama’s dismemberment ban.

Ban supporters note that in 2000’s Stenberg v. Carhart, the pro-abortion Justice John Paul Stevens admitted that partial-birth abortion and dismemberment abortion were “equally gruesome,” and that it was “simply irrational” to conclude that one was “more akin to infanticide than the other.” Stenberg struck down the federal partial-birth abortion ban, but Gonzales v. Carhart ultimately upheld it in 2007.

[SeekAndFind]

The Battle to save the lives of innocent babies is now being waged in the courts. Pray that Trump successfully appoints and confirm judges who will uphold the constitution and not indulge in judicial activism.

[CMailBag]

Gotta keep killin’ those babies..

[faithhopecharity]

we desperately need to Drain the Judicial Swamp, not just the Congressional and Bureaucrappic Swamps

PDJT is appointing some new judges...but we are still stuck with the basturds who write orders like...this?

[cnsmom]

The whole process is evil but how the aborted baby is disposed of is inhuman. The disposal medical waste companies should be shut down.

[Oscar in Batangas]

Didn’t we already wage a war - brother against brother - on the issue of States’ Rights?

Or did that go away when they revised American History.

[vette6387]

If some vigilante group wanted to have an effect on our country they should start with the judges. It is because of “men” like this guy McKinley that our country cannot rid itself of the stigma of the Clinton and Obola Administrations.

[SauronOfMordor]

Senate only approved two judges last week. They need to pick up the pace.

[bigbob]

Yes, until new laws or a Scotus decision, we will get more dead babies.

[SecondAmendment]

> Didn’t we already wage a war - brother against brother - on the issue of States’ Rights?

Bingo !
Leftists cannot give up on claiming people as property ....

[Carl Vehse]

U.S. District Judge Joseph McKinley needs to be on the list of people who should be indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced to publicly hang for genocidal murder, crimes against humanity, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

[onedoug]

God, almighty....

Another murderous enemy islamist dhimmicrat.

[Skywise]

So you can’t have gruesome executions and they must be humane and companies will prevent their tools and pharmaceuticals from being used for even humane executions and leftists applaud - but it’s a LEGAL RIGHT to rip arms off of babies in the womb coz they ain’t real...

[NormsRevenge]

You’d expect nothing less from a Clintoon appointee,, 1995..

https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/mckinley-joseph-h-jr

[TMN78247]

ImVho, the baby-killers & the activist/LEFTIST judges that allow their murders of the innocent to continue unabated will have “a seat really near the fire, that burns eternally”, when they are JUDGED for their sins.

Yours, TMN78247

[Junk Silver]

“Didn’t we already wage a war - brother against brother - on the issue of States’ Rights?”

You are correct. Prior to our Civil War people used to say “The United States are” referring to plural states. After that war the phrase became “The United States is” referring to single Federal power.

This gives a good indication as to which point of view on States Rights prevailed in that conflict.

[eyeamok]

A recent detailed study of the courts of all 50 states and the District of Columbia determined that 46 states and the District of Columbia adopt the position that the precedents of lower federal courts are not binding in their jurisdictions. Wayne A. Logan, A House Divided: When State and Lower Federal Courts Disagree on Federal Constitutional Rights, 90 Notre Dame L. Rev. 235, 280-81 (2014). The position of three other states is uncertain. Only one state (Delaware) defers to the constitutional decisions of lower federal courts. Id. At 281.

Federal courts have recognized that state-court review of constitutional questions is independent of the same authority lodged in the lower federal courts. “In passing on federal constitutional questions, the state courts and the lower federal courts have the same responsibility and occupy the same position; there is a parallelism but not paramountcy for both sets of courts are governed by the same reviewing authority of the Supreme Court.” United States ex rel.Lawrence v. Woods, 432 F.2d 1072, 1075 (7th Cir. 1970).

Although consistency between state and federal courts is desirable in that it promotes respect for the law and prevents litigants from forum-shopping, there is nothing inherently offensive about two sovereigns reaching different legal conclusions. Indeed, such results were contemplated by our federal system, and neither sovereign is required to, nor expected to, yield to the other.

Surrick v. Killion, 449 F. 3d 520, 535 (3rd Cir. 2006).

The United States Supreme Court has acknowledged that state courts “possess the authority, absent a provision for exclusive federal jurisdiction, to render binding judicial decisions that rest on their own interpretations of federal law.” Asarco Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U.S. 605, 617 (1989). Two justices of the United States Supreme Court in special writings have elaborated on this principle.

The Supremacy Clause demands that state law yield to federal law, but neither federal supremacy nor any other principle of federal law requires that a state court’s interpretation of federal law give way to a (lower) federal court’s interpretation. In our federal system, a state trial court’s interpretation of federal law is no less authoritative than that of the federal court of appeals in whose circuit the trial court is located.

Lockhart v. Fretwell, 506 U.S. 364, 375-76 (1993) (Thomas, J., concurring). See also Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U.S. 452, 482, n. 3 (1974) (Rehnquist, J., concurring) (noting that a lower- federal-court decision “would not be accorded the stare decisis effect in state court that it would have in a subsequent proceeding within the same federal jurisdiction. Although the state court would not be compelled to follow the federal holding, the opinion might, of course, be viewed as highly persuasive.”).

[Deepeasttx]

Where is it in the constitution that takes away state’s say so on abortion? Oh yea, almost missed that. Framer’s intent! Just like legalizing homosexuality nationwide. We are very close to dropping “United States” from our title. So much for that pesky constitution thingy.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

We are in the middle of a holocaust of babies. Now maybe people can see why no one rose up against the Nazis as Hitler came to power. We the enlightened are sitting queitly too.

Today the outrage and the shame is obscured behind Game of Thrones, iPads, McFood, Facebook, and Twitter. We have tens of millions of guns, and in theory we could rise up. However society is structured differently now, and any uprising would be doomed to failure unless it were so spontaneous and widespread that the goons would be unable to react.

People have soft lives now with credit cards and lots of stuff. Are they going to sacrifice all that for the sake of innocents? Is that a dumb question?
 

[stinkerpot65]

The Democrat craves a mutilated baby.

[maxwellsmart_agent]

U.S. District Judge Joseph McKinley is another judical activist judge appointed by none other than Bill Clinton. What more could you expect from him?