Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas slammed women who have abortions as heartless “eugenicists” in a 20-page opinion Tuesday opposing the high court’s majority decision not to overturn a lower court’s ruling that blocked Indiana abortion restrictions that would have stopped women from aborting due to a fetus’ sex, race or disability.
According to Newsweek, the nation’s highest court on Tuesday did uphold a portion of Indiana’s abortion law that requires fetal remains to be buried or cremated.
However, as Newsweek reports:
the court also permitted a prior ruling, which blocked the prohibition on abortion because of a fetus’ sex, race or disability. The court did not express an opinion on the Seventh Circuit’s ruling, writing “we follow our ordinary practice of denying petitions insofar as they raise legal issues that have not been considered by additional Courts of Appeals.”
The case revolved around a challenge to a 2016 law signed by then Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s current second in command. A portion of the law required burial or cremation for fetal remains following an abortion, while another provision in the law barred abortion, based on a fetus’ sex or race, as well as “any disease, defect or disorder.”
The only exception would be if the child would die within three months of birth. (I guess medical science would take precedence here. Shocking.)
The court’s decision not to firmly back Indiana’s abortion ban for reasons of disease or defect apparently had Thomas, known for his relative silence from the bench, loosening his tongue.
Noting, according to Slate, that the abortion rate “among black women is nearly 3.5 times the ration for women,” Thomas wrote that abortion:
“is an act rife with the potential for eugenic manipulation.” Thanks to “today’s prenatal screening tests and other technologies, abortion can easily be used to eliminate children” due to some trait or abnormality. Indeed, Thomas wrote, abortion is a “disturbingly effective tool for implementing the discriminatory preferences that undergird eugenics.”
When it comes to women who may choose to end their pregnancies due to some type of genetic abnormality, Thomas, Slate reports, “accuses these women of seeking ‘eugenic abortions,’ of wishing to ‘eliminate’ an ‘unborn child’ for ‘discriminatory’ reasons.”
Wow. Women make the decision to terminate pregnancies for any number of reasons, valid reasons germane to a woman having control of her own body and her reproductive desires, or lack thereof. These are often some of the most difficult decisions of women’s lives and those of their families.
It is just amazing the rank callousness that is so often assigned to women making such choices.
But with some half dozen states now with laws on the books virtually outlawing abortion—often even without exceptions for instances of rape or incest—the outcome of fetuses is being given more consideration than outcomes for women, the children women may already have or even the children those fetuses may become.