Clarence Thomas Issues Abortion Warning After Latest Supreme Court Decision
Warning that abortion may already be serving the ends of the early 20th century eugenics movement, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said that although the court has rightly turned aside a case presented to it regarding an Indiana law, it cannot evade the issue of abortion forever.
The court decided it would not review an appeal from Indiana that sought to keep in place part of an Indiana law that bans abortion on the basis of race, sex or disability. The anti-abortion provision was signed into law by then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence in 2016, but later rejected by an appeals court, CNN reported.
Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion that the court was right not to hear this case, but said it cannot duck abortion cases much longer.
“Although the Court declines to wade into these issues today, we cannot avoid them forever. Having created the constitutional right to an abortion, this Court is duty bound to address its scope,” Thomas wrote, referring to the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in America.
Much of Thomas’s opinion discussed the eugenics movement, and efforts by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and others to limit the growth of non-white races.
“Enshrining a constitutional right to an abortion based solely on the race, sex, or disability of an unborn child, as Planned Parenthood advocates, would constitutionalize the views of the 20th Century eugenics movement,” Thomas wrote. “In other contexts, the Court has been zealous in vindicating the rights of people even potentially subjected to race, sex, and disability discrimination.”
In fact, he said, there was a valid question of whether laws such as the one drafted by Indiana “promote a State’s compelling interest in preventing abortion from becoming a tool of modern-day eugenics.”
“Given the potential for abortion to become a tool of eugenic manipulation, the Court will soon need to confront the constitutionality of laws like Indiana’s. But because further percolation may assist our review of this issue of first impression, I join the Court in declining to take up the issue now,” he wrote.
In his opinion, after discussing the history of the eugenics movement in America, Thomas wrote, that there exists “a growing body of evidence suggests that eugenic goals are already being realized through abortion.”
“And with today’s prenatal screening tests and other technologies, abortion can easily be used to eliminate children with unwanted characteristics. Indeed, the individualized nature of abortion gives it even more eugenic potential than birth control, which simply reduces the chance of conceiving any child.
“As petitioners and several amicus curiae briefs point out, moreover, abortion has proved to be a disturbingly effective tool for implementing the discriminatory preferences that undergird eugenics,” Thomas wrote.
Thomas said that what eugenicists wanted in the 20th century has become reality in the 21st century.
“Eight decades after Sanger’s ‘Negro Project,’ abortion in the United States is also marked by a considerable racial disparity. The reported nationwide abortion ratio — the number of abortions per 1,000 live births — among black women is nearly 3.5 times the ratio for white women,” Thomas wrote, adding, “Some believe that the United States is already experiencing the eugenic effects of abortion.”
Many on Twitter applauded Thomas for his stand.
Justice Thomas has 12 pages on the eugenic and racist roots of Planned Parenthood and abortion in the recent SCOTUS Indiana decision. No rebuttal whatever from the left-wing justices. The progressive big lie is starting to fall apart! https://t.co/EHw2fKydMg
— Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) May 28, 2019
Thomas Sowell is probably close, but Clarence Thomas is the single greatest living American. I firmly believe that.
— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) May 28, 2019
Throughout his opinion, Thomas made the case that abortion and eugenics are inextricably linked.
“The use of abortion to achieve eugenic goals is not merely hypothetical. The foundations for legalizing abortion in America were laid during the early 20th Century birth control movement. That movement developed alongside the American eugenics movement,” Thomas wrote.
Thomas said abortion can be used to target unborn babies with specific characteristics.
“This case highlights the fact that abortion is an act rife with the potential for eugenic manipulation. From the beginning, birth control and abortion were promoted as means of effectuating eugenics.
“Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was particularly open about the fact that birth control could be used for eugenic purposes. These arguments about the eugenic potential for birth control apply with even greater force to abortion, which can be used to target specific children with unwanted characteristics,” he wrote.
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