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.
Democrats Campaigning Against Their Own Congressional Nominee Who Happens to Be in Federal Prison
Boxing Legend Mike Tyson Delivers Controversial Letter to Trump, Makes Bold Midterm Prediction
Who is Sally Yates? Cornell rape-review pick was fired by Trump after refusing to defend travel ban
One Colorado County Is Trying to Write Energy Policy for Texas: SCOTUS Has a Chance to Shut It Down
Senate Republicans playing defense heading into Election Day
Jewish Democrats consider Republican Mike Rogers for Senate
Women, Want to Radically Increase the Chances Your Marriage Will Last? Take Your Husband’s Last Name: Study
Key American industry seeing blue-collar jobs boom as Trump’s re-shoring policies pay off
In Spain’s Ceuta, a delayed government response leaves underage migrants on the streets
Socialists set sights on the ground floor of government as GOP warns of bigger plan unfolding
Multiple people killed in Pennsylvania shooting; suspected gunman found dead: report
Philadelphia police officer killed, another critical after ambush attack; suspect found hiding in tree
Fetterman plays political maverick, but his voting record tells another story
Watch: Hockey Crowd Goes Wild When WWII Vet, 105, Who Fought Under Patton Performs Nat’l Anthem on ICE
Country Star Ella Langley Abruptly Cancels Concert over ‘Serious Security Threat’
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.
