WASHINGTON — Today, in an 8-1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Cameron v. EMW Women’s Surgical Center that Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron can defend a pro-life law when another state official refused to do so.
The law at issue in the case, Kentucky’s H.B. 454, “The 2018 Human Rights of the Child Act,” prohibits live dismemberment abortions that “will result in the bodily dismemberment, crushing, or human vivisection of the unborn child” when the unborn child is 11 weeks or older.
The law was originally struck down by an appellate court and the current governor, pro-abortion Democrat Andy Beshear, refused to defend the law. A lower court refused to allow AG Cameron to defend the law arguing that he came to the process too late.
The issue before the Court was not the constitutionality of the law but whether Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron had the right to defend it.
“We applaud the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court for recognizing the right of a state officer to defend a state law when a pro-abortion governor refuses to do so,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life.
“Changing political winds do not give state officials the right to ignore a law passed by the duly-elected members of the state legislature and signed into law by a predecessor in the governor’s office,” said Tobias. “It is outrageous that a lower court would act to prevent the attorney general of a state from defending a duly passed law.”
Addia Wuchner, the executive director of Kentucky Right to Life and former state representative for Boone Co, Kentucky, was the author and sponsor of H.B. 454. In 2018, Ms. Wuchner was joined with 106 of the 138 members of the state house and senate who voted to pass a ban on dismemberment abortions where an unborn child is torn apart, limb by limb.
In his dissent to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2000 Stenberg v. Carhart decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy observed that in D&E dismemberment abortions, “The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn limb from limb. The fetus can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process and can survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off.” Justice Kennedy added in the Court’s 2007 opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart that D&E abortions are “laden with the power to devalue human life…”
“Kentucky’s law should be upheld so that unborn babies can be protected from a cruel and inhumane death,” said Tobias. “The U.S. Supreme Court found that bans on partial-birth abortions are constitutional, and we hope that the courts will recognize Kentucky’s right to protect its unborn children from the equally gruesome dismemberment abortion procedure.”