Appeals Court Judges Ask Supreme Court to Allow States to Ban Abortion Before Viability

photo credit: Joe Gratz / Flickr

In their Jan. 5 opinions in Little Rock Family Planning v. Rutledge, Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Ralph Erickson and Bobby Shepherd both lamented that Supreme Court precedent required them to rule against two Arkansas pro-life laws. As a result, they also wrote that the Supreme Court should revise its stance on pre-viability abortion bans.

The two laws that the judges ruled against banned abortion after 18 weeks gestation and banned abortions done purely because a child was diagnosed with Down Syndrome.

Judge Erickson wrote that the Supreme Court should “revisit its precedent in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey,” which effectively banned states' ability to ban abortion before viability.

Erickson expressed concern that the inability of states to ban abortion before viability will lead to an increase in the practice of eugenic abortions, such as those done to kill unborn children with Down Syndrome.

Erickson wrote,

“The great glory of humanity is in its diversity. We are a species remarkably variant in our talents, abilities, appearances, strengths, and weaknesses. The human person has immense creative powers, a range of emotional responses that astound the observant, and a capacity to love and be loved that is at the core of human existence. Each human being possesses a spirit of life that at our finest we have all recognized is the essence of humanity. And each human being is priceless beyond measure. Children with Down syndrome share in each of these fundamental attributes of humanity.”

 Shepherd, who also voiced concern about the eugenics movement, wrote,

“Act 619, which prohibits a physician from performing or attempting to perform an abortion based on a diagnosis or suspicion of Down syndrome involves significant and, as yet, unconsidered issues regarding the balance of interests when the sole reason a woman seeks an abortion is what she deems an unwanted immutable characteristic of the unborn child. And Casey directs that we resolve this inquiry by considering viability alone.”

 Click here to read more.