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, and another decision in which Colloton wrote a separate concurrence to dilute a pro-life decision by the court. It was in the concurrence that Colloton revealed, unwittingly, his full support of the pro-abortion mindset of Roe v. Wade:

I concur in Parts I through III of the court's opinion, except that I find it unnecessary to consider the meaning of the hypothetical phrase "a description of all known risks of the procedure ... to which the pregnant woman would be subjected." Ante, at 10 & n.3. The most natural reading of S.D.C.L. § 34-23A-10.1 is that it requires the physician to present "a description of all known medical risks of the procedure," including "[i]ncreased risk of suicide ideation and suicide." Ante, at 9-10. For the reasons set forth in Part III, the statutory language thus calls for a description of the relative risks of suicide ideation and suicide that are discussed in the peer-reviewed literature. See ante, at 7-9, 13. The phrase "to which the pregnant woman would be subjected" modifies "statistically significant risk factors." The district court's order striking "statistically significant risk factors" did not rewrite the statute to cause the phrase that follows the stricken text to modify antecedent text that was not previously modified.

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).

The pro-abortion ruling in Roe v. Wade 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).

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 not directly related to abortion, Colloton took the unusual step of overturning a condition of probation imposed by a federal district court to stop a career criminal from continuing to father out-of-wedlock children, after the criminal had fathered ten such 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.