Indiana Supreme Court Won’t Put Abortion Ban on Hold, State Can Keep Saving Babies From Abortions

On Tuesday, a divided Indiana Supreme Court chose not to hear an appeal of a few women who successfully filed a religious freedom lawsuit against the state’s very protective abortion law. The law permits abortions only when mother’s life or health is at risk or in the case of rape, incest, or lethal fetal anomaly.

On December 2, 2022, Marion County Judge Heather Welch agreed with a group of anonymous women and the organization Hoosier Jews For Choice who maintained the law infringed on their religious beliefs.

On April 4, 2024, the Indiana Court of Appeals agreed with Justice Welch. Mike Fichter, Indiana Right to Life President, strongly disagreed with the Indiana Court of Appeals’ decision:

“Today’s court ruling is wrongly decided. The Indiana Supreme Court has already ruled the state has a compelling interest in protecting unborn life, and Indiana’s new abortion-restriction law is doing that by reducing Indiana abortions to the lowest level in five decades. We are confident Indiana will prevail against any claims that abortion — the intentional ending of an innocent and helpless human life — is a religious freedom.”

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Thus both a trial court and the Indiana Court of Appeals “ruled that the state’s abortion ban likely violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” Brandon Smith reported. “And those decisions temporarily halted the state from enforcing the ban, but only against the few women initially involved in the case.”

The state appealed to the Supreme Court, according to Smith. “And in a 3-2 vote, the court opted not to hear the appeal.”

It was a curious decision based on a “wait-and-see” conclusion.

In Justice Derek Molter’s view, since the women involved in the lawsuit aren’t pregnant, or seeking an abortion, the temporary block on the law has very little effect,

Better for the Supreme Court to wait until the case is more thoroughly argued and decided at the lower court levels, he added.

Justice Molter concluded

Of course, sometimes things change, or our predictions prove mistaken. While there appears to be no emergent reason for us to intervene at this point in the litigation, an exigency could arise down the road. In which case, able counsel on both sides are well equipped to seek further review and relief in our appellate courts.

Justice Geoffrey Slaughter dissented, and he was joined by Justice Mark Massa. He argued there were key issues the state’s highest court should address. not in a later phase, but now:

At issue is the propriety of the trial court’s preliminary injunction. The injunction is premised on the court’s conclusion that enforcing our state’s abortion law will likely violate the plaintiffs’ rights under our RFRA statute, Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. In my view, three issues warrant review now:

According to Justice Slaughter, those three issues are

• whether the individual plaintiffs’ claimed injuries have sufficiently matured—ripened—into a justiciable controversy since the women are not now pregnant and may never seek an abortion;
• whether we should adopt associational standing, so another plaintiff, Hoosier Jews for Choice, an organization that has not sustained any injury, can sue in its own name on behalf of members who claim injury; and
• whether the trial court correctly interpreted and applied RFRA, which requires that a law burdening religious exercise must advance a compelling governmental interest through the least restrictive means available

He concluded his dissent by writing

While I can appreciate my colleagues’ wait-and-see view in the abstract, I cannot agree with their rationale for deferring consideration of this appeal today. Our denial of transfer means the trial court’s “final answer” will lack the benefit of our current thinking. By saying nothing, we may leave the misimpression that the injunction’s only vulnerability is its scope.

The case now returns to the trial court.

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.