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Supreme Court: You Can Abort a Baby Because She's a Girl -- For Now
Townhall.com ^ | May 29, 2019 | Terry Jeffrey

Posted on 05/29/2019 4:32:44 AM PDT by Kaslin

A mother and father in Indianapolis have only one child, a little girl who is 2 years old. The mother becomes pregnant with another.

She and her husband have decided they want only two children -- and they want the second to be a boy.

Eighteen weeks into pregnancy, the mother undergoes a screening that determines her unborn child is a girl. With the full support of her husband, she decides to abort this little girl so they can have another try at conceiving a boy.

Whose side will the Supreme Court take on the question of whether the mother has a constitutional right to kill this unborn child because she is a girl? The mother's side, or the little girl's?

Which side will Planned Parenthood take?

The mother gets pregnant again. This time, when she undergoes a screening, they discover the unborn child is a boy.

But then they discover this unborn boy has Down syndrome.

Once again, the mother -- supported by the father -- decides to abort this unborn child.

Whose side will the court and Planned Parenthood take?

The married couple cited here is hypothetical. But the mother's decision to abort one baby because she is a girl and another because he has Down syndrome goes to the core of a real question the Supreme Court refused to answer this week. It let stand a decision handed down by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said it is unconstitutional for Indiana to ban abortions that a mother seeks solely because she is displeased with certain attributes of her unborn child, including the child's sex, race or disability.

At the same time, the court summarily reversed the appeals court's decision that had overturned another part of this same Indiana law that had required abortion providers to bury or cremate the remains of aborted babies.

Then-Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana signed this law in 2016. In its opinion declaring the law unconstitutional, the appeals court summarized the law's "Sex Selective and Disability Abortion Ban," stating that it prohibited abortions where "'the pregnant woman is seeking' an abortion 'solely because of the sex of the fetus' ... 'solely because the fetus has been diagnosed with Down syndrome or has a potential diagnoses of Down syndrome,' or has been diagnosed with or has a potential diagnosis of 'any other disability' ... or 'solely because of the race, color, national origin, or ancestry of the fetus.'"

Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky sued Indiana to stop this law. In 2017, a U.S. district court declared the law unconstitutional. The appeals court upheld that decision -- citing the Supreme Court's decisions in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

"The non-discrimination provisions clearly violate this well-established Supreme Court precedent holding that a woman may terminate her pregnancy prior to viability, and that the State may not prohibit a woman from exercising that right for any reason," the appeals court concluded.

Tellingly, while addressing the law's requirement that aborted babies be buried or cremated, the appeals court felt compelled to critique Indiana's scientific conclusion that an unborn human child is a "human being."

"According to the State," the court said, "the provisions further the State's legitimate interest in 'the humane and dignified disposal of human remains.' Such a position inherently requires a recognition that aborted fetuses are human beings, distinct from other surgical byproducts, such as tissue or organs."

"Indeed, in its brief," the court continued, "Indiana maintained that it 'validly exercised its police power by making a moral and scientific judgment that a fetus is a human being who should be given a dignified and respectful burial and cremation."

"However," said the appeals court, "the Supreme Court has concluded that 'the word "person," as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.'"

"Simply put," the appeals court concludes, "the law does not recognize that an aborted fetus is a person. 'This conclusion follows inevitably from the decision to grant women a right to abort. If even a (non-viable) fetus is a person, surely the state would be allowed to protect (the fetus) from being killed.'"

Should it not also be allowed to protect an unborn human being from being killed?

Not in the view of this appeals court, which ruled that a state may not even stop an abortionist from killing an unborn child because the mother has decided she does not want a girl.

The Supreme Court did not see this as a pressing question.

"Our opinion likewise expresses no view on the merits of the second question presented, i.e., whether Indiana may prohibit the knowing provision of sex-, race-, and disability-selective abortions by abortion providers," said the court in its unsigned per curiam decision.

"Only the Seventh Circuit has thus far addressed this kind of law," the court said. "We follow our ordinary practice of denying petitions insofar as they raise legal issues that have not been considered by additional Courts of Appeals."

So Americans will need to wait -- and abortionists will continue to kill unborn babies -- as the Supreme Court seeks what it deems a timelier moment to decide whether all humans have a right to life.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: supremecourt
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1 posted on 05/29/2019 4:32:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Is Ruthie dead yet?


2 posted on 05/29/2019 4:36:37 AM PDT by Vaquero ( Don't pick a fight with an old guy. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.)
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To: Kaslin

LORD, Rescue the unborn from abortion. Forgive us for our complacency.
We say, “We knew nothing about this," but You who weighs the heart
knows everything. (Proverbs 24:11-12)

In JESUS' Name we pray. AMEN.

3 posted on 05/29/2019 4:38:01 AM PDT by stars & stripes forever (Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. (Psalm 32:12))
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To: Kaslin
The Indiana law that was the subject of this petition seems like it would never stand up under any objective legal scrutiny.

Is Indiana really trying to erect barriers to aborting any unborn child except a healthy white male? This seems bizarre, to say the least.

4 posted on 05/29/2019 4:39:38 AM PDT by Alberta's Child (“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” — Frederick Douglass)
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To: Kaslin

“...the law does not recognize that an aborted fetus is a person.”

Then the law is immoral and insane.


5 posted on 05/29/2019 4:41:24 AM PDT by Pravious
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To: Kaslin

As the doctor they expressed their wishes to, I would quickly and discreetly lead them into a small quiet room where the procedure is to be preformed and calmly put a bullet in both of their heads. Her first.


6 posted on 05/29/2019 4:43:17 AM PDT by Delta 21 (Be strong & prosper, be weak & die! Stay true.... ~~ Donald J. Trump)
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To: Kaslin

For all of those women who cry “because I’m a woman, and it’s my body, I have a choice”, what choice does the woman in the womb have?!!!!


7 posted on 05/29/2019 4:43:37 AM PDT by Road Warrior ‘04 (Boycott The NFL! Molon Labe! Oathkeeper)
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To: Pravious

I know this world is made up of all kinds of people, but I never thought people would agree with aborting a child because it is not the sex they wanted. The world has definitely gone insane!


8 posted on 05/29/2019 4:44:52 AM PDT by LoveMyFreedom
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To: LoveMyFreedom
Once the law allows you to kill your own child, the government really has no business telling you that it can't be done for certain reasons.

This is the real danger in a society where the foundations of the law are no longer rational. Even most laws passed to protect human life are irrational.

9 posted on 05/29/2019 4:47:47 AM PDT by Alberta's Child (“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” — Frederick Douglass)
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To: Kaslin

China would be proud.


10 posted on 05/29/2019 4:53:21 AM PDT by Old Yeller (Auto-correct has become my worst enema.)
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To: Alberta's Child

I don’t know where you’re coming up with this. If the parents decided to abort a baby simply BECAUSE it is a white male that would have also been forbidden under this law. I think the bigger issue is, how do you definitively know what the true reason for the abortion is? Seems like the law could have been skirted pretty easily.


11 posted on 05/29/2019 4:53:38 AM PDT by sam_whiskey (Peace through Strength.)
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To: Kaslin

Drs take an oath... FOR life.

Days past, patients died for lack of cures. Today they know too much and play with life.. messing in what should be, a forbidden arena.


12 posted on 05/29/2019 4:55:36 AM PDT by frnewsjunkie
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To: Alberta's Child

I haven’t had a chance to drill down into either the law or the ruling.
But if the law is as you say, my guess is that the Indiana legislature constructed the law to trigger the SJW talking points about eugenics, to demonstrate that the talking points were merely posturing all along: that the left wants unlimited abortion on demand even if used for eugenics or to preferentially abort those otherwise highly ranked on the SJW victim scale.


13 posted on 05/29/2019 4:58:19 AM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change with out notice.)
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To: Road Warrior ‘04

“because I’m a woman, and it’s my body, I have a choice”

I did not get to my point of view on abortion on religious grounds. Seems to have started back in my high school days when the Vietnam war had just started to escalate. If you were an 18 year old guy, you had to register for the draft, with a good chance you’d wind up going to fight. Lots of people complained and protested about this fact.

I remember being at a friend of mines house with several other people from school. One of them was on a rant, about “I have two sisters and they don’t have to register for the draft.” My friends father who was in the next room (and a World War II vet) came into the room and said, “boy, it’s this simple - women have babies and men fight wars.” Seemed completely logical to me.

As far as I can remember, no women ever assembled in groups to protest not being drafted. I guess at that time it wasn’t “their body and their choice.” And what my friend’s father had said made perfectly good sense to me.


14 posted on 05/29/2019 4:58:58 AM PDT by I cannot think of a name
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To: Kaslin

Hideous.


15 posted on 05/29/2019 5:00:54 AM PDT by onedoug
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To: Kaslin

If you want to kill “it” because it is colored, female, or might be handicapped that is “protected” because the sissy court didn’t want to weigh in at this point. It’s a big groundbreaking decision and they want it to kick around in the lower courts first. But gay gay gay cases can change the nation every June (Pride Month, how queer is it they reserve June for those decisions).


16 posted on 05/29/2019 5:02:16 AM PDT by a fool in paradise (Denounce DUAC - The Democrats Un-American Activists Committee)
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To: Kaslin

Killing one child to obtain another. I guess we know the value of the second child to the ‘parents’ - nothing.


17 posted on 05/29/2019 5:05:49 AM PDT by griffin
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To: Kaslin

Jesus is coming and he’s pissed.


18 posted on 05/29/2019 5:10:44 AM PDT by HighSierra5
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To: sam_whiskey

That’s a good point. But let’s be honest here — the whole purpose of this law was to protect female and minority children. That’s because of the cultural and historical factors in play where these groups have been targeted for “disposal.” Clarence Thomas even makes this point in his published filing on the matter.


19 posted on 05/29/2019 5:13:32 AM PDT by Alberta's Child (“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” — Frederick Douglass)
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To: Kaslin
Ah, yes, the epitome of the narcissistic couple.

I feel like I'm back in the 60s, watching some apocalyptic futuristic movie.

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, Part Deux?

20 posted on 05/29/2019 5:13:40 AM PDT by LouAvul
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