INDIANAPOLIS – Abortion providers are asking an Indiana judge this week to expand access to abortion under the state’s near-total ban.
Indiana law allows abortion in rare circumstances, including when the woman’s health or life is at risk, but only in hospitals.
Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers are asking a Monroe County judge for a preliminary injunction expanding medical exemptions and blocking the hospital-only requirement. The three-day trial before Special Judge Kelsey Blake Hanlon began Wednesday with opening arguments and testimony from an obstetrician-gynecologist who is the plaintiff.
The Indiana Supreme Court upheld the ban in June, ending a broader legal challenge brought by the same plaintiffs, but said the state constitution protects women’s right to an abortion when their life or health is at risk.
The plaintiffs say exceptions to the ban to protect health are written so narrowly that, in practice, many doctors do not terminate a pregnancy even when the woman’s condition qualifies under the law.
According to the complaint, the ban does not take into account conditions that could threaten health later during pregnancy, after childbirth or conditions that could worsen other health problems. The health and life exception allows abortion up to 20 weeks of pregnancy.
The plaintiffs also want women to be able to have an abortion if there is a medical indication for psychological reasons. The current statute explicitly excludes the threat of self-harm or suicide as a “serious health risk,” which is another reason why plaintiffs say the state’s definition is unconstitutional.
“The uncertainty caused by the Health or Life Exception’s confusing definition of serious health risk and threats of licensing penalties and criminal prosecution prevent Indiana doctors from performing abortions necessary to protect the life and health of their patients,” says the complaint.
Only a few hospitals, mostly in the Indianapolis area, offer abortions and often at a higher cost than clinics, the complaint says. Doctors who prescribe medication must watch the woman swallow pills, delaying abortion for patients who do not live nearby.
The state called the vendors’ claims “vague and ambiguous” in court filings and denied that Indiana infringes on any legal rights.
The challenge was filed in politically liberal Monroe County, home to Indiana University’s main campus, but Democratic justices handed off the case until it reached Hanlon, a Republican elected in a neighboring conservative county.
Indiana became the first state to enact stricter abortion restrictions after the U.S. Supreme Court ended federal abortion protections by overturning Roe v. Wade. Wade in June 2022. State law also allows exceptions for rape, incest and lethal fetal anomalies in limited circumstances.
Since the ban went into effect, abortions in the state have dropped dramatically. According to the latest report from the state health department, 46 abortions were reported in the last three months of 2023, compared to 1,724 in the last quarter of 2022.
A separate legal challenge seeks to establish a religious exception to Indiana’s abortion ban. The state attorney general asked the Indiana Supreme Court last week to take up the case after an appeals court sided with four residents and the Hoosier group Jews for Choice in April.
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