The Supreme Court turned away a challenge on May 1 to Indiana’s law requiring the cremation or burial of the remains of aborted babies.
The lawsuit is one of many nationwide that have been adjudicated in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade. In that case, the Supreme Court found there was no right to abortion in the U.S. Constitution and returned the regulation of abortion to the states.
The lawsuit contested a 2016 law signed by Republican Mike Pence, the Indiana governor at the time who become U.S. vice president in 2017, that required the burial or cremation of the tissue from abortions instead of using the conventional method of incineration utilized for human medical waste. The Supreme Court previously upheld the law in 2019 before the Dobbs decision changed the legal landscape on abortion, determining at the time that the state had a legitimate interest in how human remains were disposed of….