Steven Colloton
Pro-choice Republicans and the Federalist Society appear to be lining up behind Judge Steve Colloton as of mid-December, and are pushing him to be nominated to the Supreme Court.
Colloton has two court decisions in favor of the pro-abortion side (see below), and another decision in which Colloton wrote a separate concurrence to dilute a pro-life decision by the court. It was in this concurrence that Colloton revealed, unwittingly, his full support of the pro-abortion mindset of Roe v. Wade:
- I concur in Part IV of the court's opinion concerning why the required disclosure is truthful. I also concur in the portion of Part V that explains why the record before the district court did not establish that the disclosure is misleading. This court took the unusual step of permitting the appellees to supplement the record on appeal, after the completion of briefing, with a 476-page supplemental appendix that includes several studies that were not presented to the district court. Without attempting to engage in a social science critique of these studies in the first instance, it is sufficient to observe that the conclusions of these studies do not, on their face, eliminate the medical and scientific uncertainty concerning the relationship between abortion and suicide ideation or suicide. See ante, at 24. I thus concur that the State was permitted to require a description of the relative risks as reflected in the peer-reviewed literature, with the physician free to augment that description based on his or her professional judgment. Ante, at 25 & n.8.
- For these reasons, I concur in the judgment.
Planned Parenthood Minn. v. Rounds, 686 F.3d 889, 906-07 (8th Cir. 2012) (Colloton, J., concurring in judgment, emphasis added). Colloton's grant of carte blanche to abortionists as though they are professionals diluted the South Dakota pro-life law and renders virtually any pro-life law about disclosure to be ineffective.
Colloton thereby echoed the pro-abortion mindset in Roe v. Wade, which likewise required the state to defer to the "professional judgment" of abortionists, such as Kermit Gosnell. This empowers abortionists to exploit the mother and terminate the life of the unborn child with impunity, and without the state being able to protect the unborn child in any way. Judge Colloton's language above is very similar to this central passage in Roe v. Wade itself:
- [This Roe v. Wade] decision vindicates the right of the physician to administer medical treatment according to his professional judgment up to the points where important state interests provide compelling justifications for intervention. Up to those points, the abortion decision in all its aspects is inherently, and primarily, a medical decision, and basic responsibility for it must rest with the physician.
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 165-66 (1973) (emphasis added).
Colloton refused to concur with the pro-life heart of the court decision. Colloton refused to agree with its following conclusion (Part VI):
- VI.
- In conclusion, we hold that the requirements of S.D.C.L. § 34-23A-10.1(1)(e)(ii) are satisfied by a disclosure that the relative risk of suicide and suicide ideation is higher for women who abort compared to women in other relevant groups, as described in the relevant medical research. The statute does not require the physician to disclose that a causal link between abortion and suicide has been proved. The disclosure is truthful, as evidenced by a multitude of studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals that found an increased risk of suicide for women who had received abortions compared to women who gave birth, miscarried, or never became pregnant. Various studies found this correlation to hold even when controlling for the effects of other potential causal factors for suicide, including pre-existing depression, anxiety, suicide ideation, childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse, child neuroticism, and low self-esteem.
Moreover, the suicide advisory is non-misleading and relevant to the patient's decision to have an abortion, as required by Casey. It is a typical medical practice to inform patients of statistically significant risks that have been associated with a procedure through medical research, even if causation has not been proved definitively. While Planned Parenthood points to uncertainty as to whether abortion itself is a causal factor in the observed correlation to suicide, as opposed to other underlying factors that tend to be associated independently with both abortion and suicide, the Supreme Court "has given state and federal legislatures wide discretion to pass legislation in areas where there is medical and scientific uncertainty," including "in the abortion context." Gonzales, 550 U.S. at 163-64. Thus, a truthful disclosure cannot be unconstitutionally misleading or irrelevant simply because some degree of medical and scientific uncertainty persists. To be sure, informed consent requirements "must be calculated to inform [a] woman's free choice, not hinder it," Casey, 505 U.S. at 877, but there is no unconstitutional hindrance of the woman's choice where, as here, the State merely is using "its regulatory authority to require a physician to provide truthful, non-misleading information relevant to a patient's decision to have an abortion, even if that information might also encourage the patient to choose childbirth over abortion," Rounds, 530 F.3d at 735.
Planned Parenthood Minn. v. Rounds, 686 F.3d 889, 905-06 (8th Cir. 2012) (emphasis added). Instead of supporting that, as all the pro-life judges on the court did, Colloton insisted on allowing abortionists to say whatever they want in order to perform their abortion, which is the same wrongful approach taken by Roe v. Wade.
On a personal side, Colloton's father, John Colloton, made millions of dollars in leadership positions at multiple entities that perform or fund abortions.
In another case in which Colloton sided with so-called reproductive freedom, he took the unusual step of overturning a condition of probation imposed by a federal district court that had stopped a career criminal from continuing to engage in sexual activity which had resulted in ten out-of-wedlock children with seven different mothers. United States v. Harris, 794 F.3d 885 (8th Cir. 2015).
Colloton is being promoted by pro-choice Republicans and interest groups because he is not going to be pro-life, and will not overturn Roe v. Wade.
Colloton's other two pro-abortion decisions
The additional two decisions by Judge Colloton in favor of the pro-abortion side were in Planned Parenthood of the Heartland v. Heineman, 664 F.3d 716 (8th Cir. 2011), and Coca-Cola Co. v. Purdy, 382 F.3d 774 (8th Cir. 2004).
In Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, Colloton joined the pro-abortion Judge Bye as he relied on a procedural technicality to preclude appeal of a settlement that abandoned defense of a good pro-life Nebraska law. The pro-aborts in Nebraska had cut a sneaky, hasty deal with the Attorney General to prevent him from defending the pro-life law, and a pro-life group intervened twice to object to the settlement and then defend the law. Nope, Judge Colloton ruled in siding with Judge Bye, based on timeliness even though two motions to intervene had been timely filed. The result was that more abortions continued to be performed in Nebraska without protection of the victims, as the pro-life law never went into effect.
In Coca-Cola Co. v. Purdy, Judge Colloton sided with the pro-abortion Judge Murphy to render a harsh, unjustified ruling against a pro-life internet activist. The activist was using variants on trade names to direct internet visitors to pro-life information. A federal statute, the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, requires proof that such activity was being engaged in "for profit" before it could be applied against free speech on the internet. Judge Colloton sided with Judge Murphy's ruling that pro-life activism is somehow "for profit," which is implausible, and these judges came down hard on the pro-life internet activist.
