Marion County judge hears challenge to Indiana’s abortion ban
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A Marion County judge will on Friday hear the second challenge to Indiana’s near-total ban on abortion.
Judge Heather A. Welch is expected to provide over the hearing, which was set to begin at 9 a.m. in Marion County Superior Court I.
Friday’s hearing is focused on a claim by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of five women who are members of the group Hoosier Jews for Choice. The ACLU says the abortion ban violates Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act and it will argue that Judge Welch should issue what would be the second preliminary injunction on the state’s new abortion law.
The hearing comes two days after the Indiana Supreme Court agreed to take up the ACLU’s first challenge to Indiana’s new abortion restrictions and left in place an order that prevents the state from enforcing the ban.
“The State is apparently under the impression that Indiana’s near-total ban on abortions—including religiously mandated abortions—only affects women once they have become pregnant and wish to terminate a pregnancy. This is a remarkably naïve view that is inconsistent both with the facts before the Court and, indeed, with human behavior more generally,” the filing reads.
Jennifer Drobac, the Samuel R. Rosen Professor of Law at the Indiana University McKinney School of Law, tells News 8: “In my opinion, the abortion ban conflicts with First Amendment rights.”
Drobac said the abortion law is more than just abortion.
“The law says human life begins at fertilization. The Jewish faith suggests that’s not true. This is an attack on religious freedom,” Drobac said. “Indiana law has dictated when a person with civil rights exists. That’s arguably the establishment of a religious perspective. Therefore, the First Amendment of free exercise rights of other religious adherence.”
Drobac says she made a bet with a classmate during college in 1984, that Roe vs. Wade, the nation’s landmark abortion right ruling, would be overturned one day.
“People’s comfort levels with science changes. I was a child when Roe passed.”
Drobac argues that the state’s law doesn’t recognize basic religious freedom and says denying a pregnant child an abortion could be considered criminal.
“To keep a child from an abortion could be considered child neglect. It’s child abuse to force a child have a baby,” Drobac said.