Why is the intolerant left working so hard to make it easy to kill a baby simply for the crime of being born with the wrong sex, skin color or an extra chromosome?
Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are fighting at a federal appeals court for the right to provide abortions based on the baby’s race, sex, or diagnosis of possible Down syndrome.
The two organizations are opposing an Indiana law, signed by then-Gov. Mike Pence in 2016, that bans aborting a baby because of race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, or diagnosis of a possible disability. The law also says aborted babies’ remains must be cremated or buried.
“We are talking about an absolute prohibition. … The woman has an absolute right as part of her privacy interests,” Ken Falk, legal director of the ACLU of Indiana, told the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals during oral arguments on Thursday, according to WFYI Indianapolis.
The state of Indiana appealed to the Seventh Circuit after the pro-abortion groups won a permanent injunction against the law from a U.S. Disrict Court judge in 2016.
In announcing the appeal, Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill told the Indianapolis Star that blocking the law “has cleared the path for genetic discrimination that once seemed like science fiction.”
Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher championed the pro-life law before the Seventh Circuit panel on Thursday. He argued that the Dignity for the Unborn Act is not about abortion but about discrimination against the disabled. He said the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a woman may choose if she wants a baby, but not which baby she wants.
Fisher warned of Iceland’s infamous 100 percent abortion rate for babies diagnosed with Down syndrome.
The ACLU’s Falk argued that the 1973 Roe v. Wade and 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decisions established an “absolute” right to abortion and that aborting a preborn baby because of a possible disability is a “privacy” issue that the state has no legal interest in. He says the pro-life law creates “an undue burden on a woman’s right to choose.”
But Fisher countered that Roe and Casey were decided before modern testing technology made it possible to determine characteristics such as sex and disability in the womb. As a result, women can now abort simply if the child is not “to her liking,” a discriminatory reason which the state has a “well-established interest in.”
In deciding to appeal Pratt’s injunction against the pro-life law, Attorney General Hill clarified, “This state has a compelling interest in protecting the dignity of the unborn and in ensuring they are not selected for termination simply because they lack preferred physical characteristics.”
When then-Gov. Mike Pence signed the Dignity for the Unborn Act, he noted, “I believe that a society can be judged by how it deals with its most vulnerable—the aged, the infirm, the disabled and the unborn.”
A coalition of disability rights groups including The Jérôme Lejeune Foundation, Saving Downs, and Down Pride filed a Friend of the Court brief supporting the Dignity for the Unborn Act. The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and the Bioethics Defense Fund spearheaded the brief, which was joined by Women Speak for Themselves.
“The Supreme Court has never recognized a right to abort an unborn child because of his or her sex, genetic abnormality, or disability,” the Friend of the Court brief pointed out. Aborting based on Downs, they said, is “disability discrimination against unborn children.” The brief noted that the Dignity for the Unborn Act also stops sex-selection abortions. –Life Site News
