With a scathing opinion, 11th Circuit panel reluctantly keeps dismemberment abortions legal

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With a scathing opinion, 11th Circuit panel reluctantly keeps dismemberment abortions legal
by Becket Adams
 | August 23, 2018 04:54 PM


The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals just affirmed a lower court’s ruling that an Alabama law banning dismemberment abortions is unconstitutional. The legal rationale, laid down in higher-court precedent, was that the ban creates “ additional risks” for women seeking to abort.

However, although the three-judge panel ruled unanimously against the Alabama Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Act, two of the three judges made it clear just how unhappy they were to be following Supreme Court precedent.

“There is constitutional law and then there is the aberration of constitutional law relating to abortion,” Chief Judge Ed Carnes wrote in this week’s ruling. “What we must apply here is the aberration.”

“In our judicial system, there is only one Supreme Court, and we are not it,” he added. “The primary factfinder is the district court, and we are not it. Our role is to apply the law the Supreme Court has laid down to the facts the district court found. The result is that we affirm the judgment of the district court.”

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