By Samantha Kamman, Abortion Columnist
After it was discovered Planned Parenthood was selling aborted baby parts, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed a law stating that aborted babies could be buried or cremated. The law would prevent the remains of these children from being sold in the manner Planned Parenthood had been caught doing. Pro-life advocates wished for the children’s remains to be treated with respect, but Planned Parenthood sued to prevent the law from taking effect, bringing it all the way to the Supreme Court.
But the nation’s highest court recently upheld the law in a 7-2 ruling, with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissenting. Ginsburg asserted that the disposal of fetal remains would constitute an “undue burden.” She also claimed that “a woman who exercises her constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy is not a ‘mother.’”
But, as Reuters reported:
“The ruling stated that the court has previously said that states have a legitimate interest in the disposal of fetal remains. The court noted that in challenging the law, Planned Parenthood did not allege that the provision implicated the right of women to obtain an abortion.”
This law will ensure abortion clinics properly dispose of the bodies of aborted babies. The SEA 329 law establishes rules for the proper disposal of the baby’s remains, and a pregnant woman can opt for a different method at her own expense. A Planned Parenthood facility in Indianapolis was revealed to have been disposing of aborted babies down a drain into the sewer system, and the emergency disposal rules of the Indiana State Department of Health had been blocked from implementing them prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Senior Counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom, Denise Burke, said of the law:
“Indiana law helps ensure that deceased unborn infants receive proper burials—a law that the high court upheld… unborn infants shouldn’t be disposed of as ‘medical waste’ when they die before birth, regardless of whether their deaths are spontaneous, accidental, or induced.”
