Mixed Results in Abortion Case

            The United States Supreme Court handed down its decision on Box v. Planned Parenthood last week, but the decision gave mixed results. The Court upheld part of the Indiana law that said the remains of an aborted child were “nothing less than the remains of a partially gestated fetus and should be treated with the same dignity.” 

            However, the Court did not give an opinion on the part of the law that “banned selective abortions based on sex, race, or disability.” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a 20-page concurrence on the decision and in doing so slammed Planned Parenthood. He said that “[e]nshrining 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 of the 20^th-century eugenics movement.”

            Thomas continued to slam Planned Parenthood for using abortion as a method of birth control or eugenics. He also gave hope to the Right-to-Life crowd when he said the following.

Given the potential for abortion to become a tool of eugenic manipulation, the Court will soon need to confront the constitutionality of laws like Indiana’s.

But because further percolation may assist our review of this issue of first impression, I join the Court in declining to take up the issue now.

            It appears that the Justices of the Supreme Court recognize that Roe v. Wade may not be or is not constitutional. However, they are not presently willing to take up the issue. It seems that they are waiting for a case where they will have no option except to decide on the constitutionality of abortion. The laws passed in Alabama banning all abortions may be just the one! Meanwhile, thousands of innocent babies are aborted every day because they are an inconvenience to the mother or other people in her life.