The Supreme Court doesn’t want to revisit landmark abortion decision Roe v. Wade — yet.
As near-total abortion bans sweep the country, one question runs underneath all public debate on the issue: When is the Supreme Court going to weigh in?
On Tuesday, the Court gave an answer: not yet.
In a case involving an Indiana abortion law, the justices gave a kind of compromise ruling, according to the Washington Post. They allowed one portion of the law, which requires that fetal remains be buried or cremated, to stand. But they declined to take up another portion of the law, which bans abortions based on the fetus’s sex, race, or diagnosis of a disability. As a result, a lower court’s decision to strike that portion of the law will stand, and the ban will not go into effect.
The decision was hotly anticipated because if the Court had decided to hear the case, it could have been an opportunity for the justices to revisit Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that established Americans’ right to an abortion. Abortion opponents around the country are eager to see the Court overturn the decision, but previous moves have suggested that the justices aren’t ready to weigh in yet. Tuesday’s decision was more of the same.
But in a concurring statement, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the Court would need to make a decision soon on laws like Indiana’s. His words were a reminder that while a Supreme Court battle over abortion isn’t happening today, it might not be far in the future.
In 2016, then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed into law a bill imposing several new restrictions on abortion. Among them were a requirement that fetal remains from an abortion or miscarriage be buried or cremated (previously, fetal remains were typically disposed of as medical waste in Indiana, according to the Atlantic). Another provision banned abortion based solely on the fetus’s sex, race, or diagnosis of disability. The provision had an exception for lethal fetal abnormalities.
Both provisions were controversial. Lawyers for the state of Indiana argue that the requirement involving fetal remains is necessary because “an aborted or miscarried fetus is nothing less than the remains of a partially gestated human and should be treated with the same dignity,” according to the Post. But abortion rights supporters said the requirement was intended to stigmatize abortion.
Supporters of the second provision cast it as necessary to prevent abortions for racist or sexist reasons, and to protect disability rights.
