Celebrated liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued in an opinion released Tuesday that a pregnant woman is not a “mother.”
“[A] woman who exercises her constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy is not a ‘mother’,” Ginsburg wrote in a footnote, which in turn responded to another footnote in the 20-page concurring opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas in the Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc. case.
As Breitbart News’ legal editor Ken Klukowski reported, the case concerned a law signed by then-Governor (now Vice President) Mike Pence of Indiana in 2016, which required that the remains of an aborted fetus (or baby) be disposed of by cremation or burial. The law also prohibited abortion on the basis of sex, race, or disability alone.
The Court upheld the first part of the law, but declined to consider the selective-abortion ban until more appellate courts had ruled on it.
Timeline: NBC host Savannah Guthrie’s mother disappears as sheriff says she may have been ‘abducted’
Rhode Island activist slams adult-run nonprofit that promoted ‘student-led’ anti-ICE school walkout
Trump urges Republicans to ‘nationalize’ voting
Massive Minnesota fraud case puts AG Keith Ellison under microscope as climate ties resurface
Teachers unions lead Portland uprisings against ICE with children present
Multi-level marketing ventures found to fund Republicans and win concessions
Norwegian royals implode with Epstein emails, son re-arrested ahead of his rape trial
DOJ opening civil rights probe after Catholic school in California broken into, vandalized
Groundhog Day and Friday the 13th
Savannah Guthrie asks for prayer as her mother remains missing: ‘We need you’
Planned Parenthood drops lawsuit challenging Trump administration’s Medicaid cuts
San Francisco uncovers nine secret drug and gambling dens disguised as convenience stores
Dozens of House Republicans Demand Mitch McConnell ‘Stop Stalling the SAVE Act’
Jeffries says GOP ‘done eff’d up in Texas,’ vows they won’t win five seats: ‘They can’t ignore it’
Chuck Schumer Lambasted After Comparing the SAVE Act to Jim Crow
In his lengthy opinion — which delighted pro-life advocates, and distressed pro-choice activists — Thomas wrote that “this law and other laws like it promote a State’s compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics.” He traced the racist and eugenicist beliefs of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, and warned that the Court would one day need to wrestle with abortion as form of racial discrimination.
In a footnote, Thomas attacked Ginsberg’s dissenting opinion, which argued the Court should not have deferred to the legal standard used by the litigants in the lower courts, but should have subjected the Indiana law to a more difficult standard instead, since it impacted “the right of [a] woman” to an abortion.
Ginsburg cited no legal authority for her claim that a pregnant woman is not a “mother.” The claim that a fetus is not a child is central to pro-choice arguments.
Story cited here.
