A judge has heard arguments in a lawsuit filed by abortionists who are asking for broader medical exceptions in an Indiana law protecting preborn children from abortion.
In November, the ACLU of Indiana announced the lawsuit on behalf of Planned Parenthood and other abortionists. Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, an international law firm, is representing other abortionists, including Amy Caldwell, who has been linked to two abortion pill deaths and one report of an infant born alive after an abortion. Closing arguments were held this week before Owen County Special Judge Kelsey Blake Hanlon.
“Many pregnant Hoosiers have suffered and continue to suffer due to the health or life exception,” claimed Allyson Slater, an attorney for Wilmer Culter Pickering Hale & Dorr. Melissa Shube, an attorney for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, argued, “Abortion bans harm patients; they make pregnancy less safe — and all people, including all Hoosiers, deserve access to the full spectrum of health care.”
Here is what the “spectrum” of abortion looks like:
Yet Indiana Solicitor General Justin Barta said the issue has already been decided by the Supreme Court, which upheld the Indiana law last summer. “The court was very clear that if you want to challenge the health or life exception, you need to have a specific person, or specific scenario that the courts can actually evaluate,” he said. “That’s not what we have here.”
The pro-abortion plaintiffs are asking for two injunctions to stop the enforcement of the health risk language, and another to stop the requirement that abortions are committed in hospitals only. The law currently states that abortions can be committed only when there is a “serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function,” which plaintiffs say is “unconstitutionally narrow.” One of their requests is to include mental health issues as an excuse to get an abortion, which is an extremely broad loophole through which nearly any abortion may be allowed.
Right to Life of Northeast Indiana Education Coordinator Abigail Lorenzen hit back against the plaintiffs’ claims, pointing out that women in life-threatening situations don’t need to be seen by abortionists, but by legitimate doctors in a hospital setting.
“It’s sad to me to see the basis that they’re using for this. They’re essentially saying that it needs to be widened because doctors are afraid and doctors are uneducated. The solution there isn’t to widen abortion regulations. The solution is to educate our doctors and to find better solutions for the problems that women are facing,” she said. “If a mom is in a life-threatening situation, the best place for her is a hospital. The best place is not in an abortion clinic where they primarily do abortions, because if she’s in a life-threatening situation, that’s not the only thing at play.”
