Supreme Court Won’t Reinstate Indiana Ban on Abortion for Sex Selection

The Supreme Court sidestepped major abortion cases Tuesday, letting stand a lower-court ruling that Indiana cannot ban abortions for the purpose of sex, race or disability selection but allowing the state to regulate the disposal of fetal remains.

The court’s unsigned opinion appeared the product of a delicate compromise, and it stressed the justices weren’t ready—for now—to consider whether either law violates the Constitution. Instead, the three-page opinion offered procedural reasons for the different, if perhaps temporary, outcomes in both cases.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, had found both Indiana provisions violate Supreme Court precedents prohibiting regulations that place an undue burden on women’s rights to end pregnancies.

Tuesday’s opinion said the justices would prefer that additional lower courts weigh in on the selective-abortion issue before addressing it themselves, and that the challenge to the fetal-remains law had not properly been framed under abortion-rights precedents.

But some justices on the court’s left and right wings made public their irreconcilable views. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor filed brief statements indicating they would have left the Seventh Circuit decision intact.

Justice Clarence Thomas issued a 20-page opinion critical of abortion rights. “Although the court declines to wade into these issues today, we cannot avoid them forever,” he wrote.