Nineteen States Ask the Supreme Court to Uphold Down Syndrome Abortion Ban

A coalition of 19 state attorneys general filed a friend of the court brief late last week asking the Supreme Court to review and uphold a 2016 Indiana law which bans abortions that are chosen solely due to a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. The law also bars other discriminatory abortions chosen solely because of other disabilities, biological sex, or race.

Last month, Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill asked the Supreme Court to review the law after the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the measure, finding it to be “unconstitutional.”

The coalition, led by Wisconsin’s attorney general, argued in the brief that the measure “furthers the State’s compelling interest in prohibiting the discriminatory elimination of classes of human beings by race, gender, or disability.”

“The Seventh Circuit invalidated this law by purporting to find within this Court’s case law a ‘categorical’ right to pre-viability abortion,” the brief noted, “a right that a State cannot infringe no matter how powerful its interest…That conclusion is legally wrong and would perversely place the unenumerated right to pre-viability abortion above even core protections of the Bill of Rights.”

They pointed out that if laws to prohibit discrimination against the Down syndrome community in other areas are under the authority of the state then preventing abortion practices that could eliminate the community should also be within the state’s authority. (Read more from “Nineteen States Ask the Supreme Court to Uphold Down Syndrome Abortion Ban” HERE)

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