Politics

Former Planned Parenthood Board President Shuts Down Ohio Down Syndrome Abortion Ban

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A federal judge who blocked an Ohio law that bans aborting unborn children with Down syndrome Wednesday, previously worked as Cincinnati Planned Parenthood’s president of the board.

The United States District Judge for the Southern District of Ohio Timothy Seymour Black worked as the director of Cincinnati’s Planned Parenthood Association from 1986 to 1989, and also served as its president in 1988.

Planned Parenthood is responsible for aborting 7,132,130 babies since Margaret Sanger founded the abortion organization in 1916. Planned Parenthood doctors aborted more than 328,348 unborn babies in 2016, and killed 6,803,782 unborn babies between 1978 and 2016, according to CNS News.

Black also serves as Ohio’s Diversity Committee Chair, a post he has occupied since 2004.

Black’s Wednesday ruling comes in response to Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s passing House Bill 214 in December, effectively banning doctors from aborting babies testing positive for Downs.

The law penalizes doctors for performing abortions on pregnant women who receive a positive test that their baby will have Down syndrome, but it does not fine or punish a woman who aborts her baby after receiving a positive test for the congenital disorder. The doctor who performs the abortion would be held responsible and would receive a fourth-degree felony charge, according to the Associated Press.

House Bill 214 was intended to take effect in late March before Black’s ruling which rendered the law ineffective pending appeal

France had a 77 percent termination rate and Denmark had a 98 percent termination rate for unborn Down syndrome babies in 2015. In the United Kingdom, 90 percent of pregnant women with a positive Down syndrome test receive an abortion, according to the British Broadcasting Corporation.

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