Opinion

Indiana’s abortion law was a moderate move

There is a lot of talk about red-state abortion extremism these days, but Indiana’s most recent attempt to honor and protect prenatal children was actually quite modest.

Under a law first enacted in 2016, the Hoosier State offered ­legal protections to prenatal children only when their lives are threatened as a protected class: that is, when an abortion is sought on the basis of their race, sex or disability.

The law also gave the bodies of prenatal children a modest amount of dignity by insisting they be buried or cremated after abortion — not discarded with, as Justice Clarence Thomas put it, “used needles, laboratory animal carcasses and surgical byproducts.”

Thomas was writing a concurrence in this week’s Supreme Court decision affirming part of the Indiana law, its requirement that the bodies of prenatal children be honored, but also letting stand a lower court’s decision to strike down legal protection for such children based on their membership in protected classes.

The Seventh Circuit claimed that abortion was protected by the Constitution before fetal viability “for any reason.”

“Any reason” includes disturbing real-life cases that Indiana was trying to address — like when abortion is sought because the mother doesn’t want a black child or when the baby is found to have a cleft pallet.

Pope Francis — whom partisans on both sides of our culture war like to cite when it suits their purposes and ignore when it doesn’t — has warned of the moral cost of discarding inconvenient people as mere things or products.

This throwaway culture, as he calls it, relies heavily on our capacity for self-deception (especially when in our economic self-interest), plus various Orwellian euphemisms, to keep the dignity of these vulnerable populations invisible to us.

The pontiff has no patience for phrases like “abortion care” or “products of conception,” which hide the moral reality of what happens to a vulnerable population. At a conference on perinatal hospice last week, he reiterated his moral disgust with children being thrown away because of their sickness or disability. Francis calls these abortions “white-glove” Nazi crimes — the very crimes Indiana’s law tried to resist.

The state has been partially successful. A glaringly obvious example of throwaway culture — discarding human bodies as literal trash — is now illegal. These children actually deserve the kind of public ceremony sought by many families after a miscarriage. Forcing abortion providers to treat these bodies with value beyond that of medical waste represents a significant gash in a cultural wall built to hide moral reality.

But the other part of the law ­remains struck down. This is particularly disturbing, given that 7 in 10 Down syndrome pregnancies are terminated.

One of the most moving moments of my life came after giving public remarks about abortion and Down syndrome. A father told me his adult son is the joy of his life, and it pained him to live in a culture in which people like his son were discarded.

Without warning, his son, tears in his eyes, bear-hugged me — a gesture at once full of gratitude and full of fear. While I will never understand what it’s like to have my existence viewed as expendable, that hug is as close as I will ever come.

In his recent concurrence, Justice Thomas noted that, though the Court was not pronouncing judgment on these issues now, “we cannot avoid them forever.” Especially as US states continue to pass abortion laws at opposite ends of the legal spectrum, the Supremes must address this massive legal uncertainty.

Let’s hope that modest legislative reforms in the direction of protecting life — especially the life of vulnerable groups like the disabled — will be permitted to stand.

Charles Camosy is associate professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University and author of the new book “Resisting Throwaway Culture.” Twitter: @CCamosy