The Road To Gilead Goes Through Indiana

With the final appeal by the ACLU to Indiana's state Supreme Court denied, the 2022 abortion ban signed into law by GOP Gov. Eric Holcomb now goes into effect.

Indiana’s near-total abortion ban is now in effect after the Indiana Supreme Court on Monday denied a request from the ACLU and Planned Parenthood to rehear the case.

For all practical purposes, health care providers had been following the abortion law since Aug. 1, though the process of the legal case ticked on.

Monday’s news comes more than a year after Gov. Eric Holcomb signed the law at the end of the 2022 special legislative session.

At the end of July, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood asked for a rehearing to clarify exemptions in the law related to an exemption to the life of the mother.

However, Chief Justice Loretta Rush, in an opinion, stated that the parties asking for a rehearing in the case did not “properly” put concerns about the impact of the abortion law on Hoosier women seeking medical care for serious health conditions or on health care providers.

The ACLU and Planned Parenthood wanted the court to maintain the injunction that completely stopped the ban from going into effect while it pursued another injunction in trial court, according to Rush’s opinion.

Justice Christopher Goff was the only member of the state’s Supreme Court to dissent with the denial to rehear the case.

In a prepared statement, Attorney General Todd Rokita said his office has defended the law every step of the way and applauded the court's decision.

“This is great news for Hoosier life and liberty," he said. "We defeated the pro-death advocates who try to interject their views in a state that clearly voted for life.”

In a statement, ACLU of Indiana executive director Jane Henegar said it's a "dark day" in the state's history.

"We have seen the horrifying impact of bans like this across the country, and the narrow exceptions included in this extreme ban will undoubtedly put Hoosiers’ lives at risk," Henegar said in the statement. "We will continue to fight in court to clarify and expand upon the current exceptions. Every person should have the fundamental freedom to control their own body and politicians’ personal opinions should play no part in this personal decision.”

IndyStar has reached out to the branch of Planned Parenthood that includes Indiana.

 

The ban criminalizes the procedure outside of hospitals, and bans all abortions except for cases of rape, incest, the health of the mother is at stake, and fatal fetal anomalies, but even then the exceptions for the life of the mother are limited to 20 weeks and rape and incest, ten. It's horrific across the board and the ban will kill women in the state, but Republicans don't care.

The majority of women of child-bearing age now live under partial or near-total abortion bans in the US, and Indiana's ban is effectively total. It's going to take a massive number of votes in order to beat the gerrymandering in these red states giving Republicans supermajority status in state legislatures. We can't abandon these states and the people in them to these monsters.

The road to Gilead has to end.