News

WASHINGTON, June 28 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The US Supreme Court today struck down Nebraska’s law banning the gruesome practice of partial-birth abortion. The 5-4 ruling will likely seriously effect the application of similar bans that are in place in Nebraska and 29 other states. Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the four dissenting justices, wrote a scathing dissent. He stated that “The notion that the Constitution of the United States, designed, among other things, ‘to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, . . . and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,’ prohibits the States from simply banning this visibly brutal means of eliminating our half-born posterity is quite simply absurd.”

Scalia noted the “court’s inclination to bend the rules when any effort to limit abortion live-birth abortion” is undertaken.  He states that the five justices who approved the ruling valued “the life of a partially delivered fetus” less than “the freedom of the woman who gave it life to kill it.” Scalia warned that the “policy-judgment-couched-as-law” made by “unelected lawyers … will be greeted by a firestorm of criticism as well it should.” He concluded that “if only for the sake of its own preservation, the Court should return this matter to the people where the Constitution, by its silence on the subject, left it and let them decide, State by State, whether this practice should be allowed.”  In another ruling on abortion, the Supreme Court upheld a Colorado law restricting free speech. The law makes it unlawful for any person within 100 feet of an abortuary entrance to “knowingly approach” within 8 feet of another person, without that person’s consent, in order to pass “a leaflet or handbill to, displa[y] a sign to, or engag[e] in oral protest, education, or counseling with [that] person.”

(with files from Pro-Life E-News)