By: MICHAEL DELGADO
The sixth circuit U.S. court ruled Thursday that Ohio’s down syndrome abortion ban could remain in effect. The bill would penalize abortion doctors who performed an abortion with the knoledge that the abortion was requested because the child was diagnoised with down syndrome.
The bill was passed by the Republican legislature and signed into law by Republican Governor John Kaisch in 2017. It was then challenged by the Planned Parenthood organization. They argued a women’s right to an abortion is absolute and that the states law would infringe on that right.
But the court ruled that that Ohio’s law did not “create a substantial obstacle to a woman’s ability to choose or obtain an abortion.” In a 9-7 ruling the court allowed Ohio to enforce their law. The case was heated with defenders of the bill calling aborting children in utero because of a down syndrome diagnosis “eugenics” and equating it to the Holocaust.
“Many think that eugenics ended with the horrors of the Holocaust. Unfortunately, it did not,” was the opinion of Judge Richard Griffin, “Eugenics was the root of the Holocaust and is a motivation for many of the selective abortions that occur today.”
“The eugenic practice of singling out human lives for death because of a Down syndrome diagnosis has no place in our society,” said Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life.
Organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood disagreed with the ruling and called it a violation of Roe v Wade. Either way the bill has been allowed into law and with no significant leftist opposition in the state the chances it will be repealed are small.
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