The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld an Indiana law that requires that aborted fetuses be buried or cremated following the procedure.
But the justices refused to consider reinstating Indiana’s ban on abortions based on gender, race or disability after it was blocked by a lower court.
The 7-2 ruling — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented — decided that clinics must treat aborted fetuses as human remains, overturning a lower court that said the burial provision had no legitimate purpose.
Both provisions were parts of a law signed in 2016 by Vice President Mike Pence when he was the governor of Indiana that were blocked by the 7th US Court of Appeals in Chicago.
The Supreme Court’s ruling comes as several Republican-led states — including Alabama and Georgia — approved tight restrictions on existing abortion rights, setting up a possible showdown in the high court over the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade decision affirming a woman’s right to an abortion.
And while the burial provision was not a direct challenge to Roe, the court’s decision signaled the possibility that the justices would be open to restricting abortion rights.
The court has a 5-4 conservative majority.
The Supreme Court noted that it has already agreed in a 1983 ruling that states have a legitimate interest in disposing of fetal remains and declared that the provision did not hinder a woman’s right to an abortion.
”This case, as litigated, therefore does not implicate our cases applying the undue burden test to abortion regulations,” the court ruled.
But the justices passed on deciding whether to reinstate Indiana’s ban on allowing doctors to perform an abortion if a woman has opted for the procedure because of the sex or race of the fetus or the “potential diagnosis” of a disability like Down syndrome.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who supports overturning Roe, wrote in his opinion that the provision promotes ”a state’s compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics.”
Ginsburg and Sotomayor would have backed the lower court’s decision in both instances.
With Post wires
