(DCWatchdog.com) – The United States Supreme Court has preserved an Indiana state abortion law requiring abortion clinics to bury or cremate miscarried or aborted unborn infants.
The law in question was signed by former US Vice President Mike Pence in 2016 when he was still the governor of Indiana.
According to Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, the law sought to guarantee the “respectful disposition of human remains” of aborted unborn babies, as cited by The Daily Caller.
The US Supreme Court practically upheld the law as it refused to hear a lawsuit challenging it, which an abortion clinic filed.
The nation’s highest court had already upheld once before the law mandating that aborted infants’ remains be appropriately disposed of.
In 2019, it rejected a legal challenge, concluding that the state of Indiana had a “legitimate interest in proper disposal of fetal remains.”
The new lawsuit challenging the legislation was filed in 2020 by “Women’s Med Group abortion clinic, along with its owner, three anonymous women and two of the clinic’s nurses.”
They argued that the law forces women who want to abort their babies to admit that “an embryo is the ontological and spiritual equivalent of a person.”
“These laws also send the unmistakable message that someone who has had an abortion or miscarriage is responsible for the death of a person,” their complaint states.
“As a result, they have caused many abortion and miscarriage patients, including Jane Doe Nos. 1, 2, and 3, to experience shame, stigma, anguish, and anger,” the lawsuit adds.
The Lawyering Project provided legal representation for the plaintiffs. This legal group says it “uses the law to improve abortion access and uphold the rights and dignity of people seeking and providing abortion care.”
The decision of the United States Supreme Court to decline to hear the pro-abortion lawsuit has thus left standing a ruling of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Seventh Circuit had upheld the Indiana law, reversing a lower court’s decision in favor of the lawsuit.
“This mandate applies only to providers; women may choose to take custody of the remains and dispose of them as they please,” the appellate court had pointed out in its ruling, now practically upheld by the Supreme Court.
A 2022 report by the Catholic News Agency reveals that some states ban the sale, transfer, or use of aborted infants for research. Those are Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
“Without regulations, medical practitioners are free to dispose of human fetal remains by incineration with medical waste, by dumping in landfills, and even by burning the remains to generate energy,” a legal brief filed by Americans United for Life (AUL) notes, as cited by CNA.
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