The Supreme Court has rejected hearing a challenge to Alabama’s abortion law. As you all well know Alabama’s governor signed a huge pro-life bill this year effectively banning all abortions in the state. But that’s not the challenge the Supreme Court refused to hear:
REUTERS – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday sidestepped a major new challenge to abortion rights by declining to hear Alabama’s bid to revive a Republican-backed state law that would have effectively banned the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The justices left in place a lower court ruling that struck down the 2016 law, which would have criminalized a method called dilation and evacuation that is the most common type of abortion performed during the second trimester of a pregnancy.
The law in question is different than an even more strict Alabama measure signed by Republican Governor Kay Ivey in May. The new law, also facing a legal challenge, would ban nearly all abortions in the state, even in cases of rape and incest.
I can understand why they’d ban that procedure because it is absolutely barbaric. It involves dismembering the unborn baby before evacuating it from the uterus.
But the 2016 law is effectively moot with the new law signed this year that bans all abortions.
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion agreeing with the court’s decision not to hear the issue now but making clear that he would vote to uphold such laws.
“The notion that anything in the Constitution prevents states from passing laws prohibiting the dismembering of a living child is implausible,” Thomas wrote.
Exactly. And when this new challenge to Alabama’s pro-life law finally gets to the Supreme Court, hopefully all the judges will see it this way.
In related news, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood have now challenged Georgia’s Heartbeat Law:
News: The ACLU and Planned Parenthood have filed their promised lawsuit against Georgia’s heartbeat bill, which prohibits abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, usually at about six weeks’ gestation.
— Alexandra DeSanctis (@xan_desanctis) June 28, 2019
Remember, Netflix promised to help fund this lawsuit by the ACLU.