Here is a link to today’s decision from the US Supreme Court. The Court upheld the constitutionality of Indiana’s law requiring the humane disposal of fetal remains. The court declined to review another provision of Indiana law prohibiting abortions due to the race, sex, or disability of the unborn child. The Court explained that the Seventh Circuit (which had invalidated the Indiana law) was the first federal court of appeals to review such a law. Accordingly, the Court explained that it would “follow [its] ordinary practice of denying petitions insofar as they raise legal issues that have not been considered by additional Courts of Appeals.”
Justice Thomas concurred and wrote a lengthy opinion exploring Indiana’s “compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics.” Justice Thomas emphasized that the “decision to allow further percolation should not be interpreted as agreement with the decisions below. Enshrining a constitutional right to an abortion based solely on the race, sex, or disability of an unborn child, as Planned Parenthood advocates, would constitutionalize the views if the 20th-century eugenics movement. In other contexts, the Court has been zealous in vindicating the rights of people even potentially subjected to race, sex, and disability discrimination.”