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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowSeveral injunctions entered as part of what has been called a “global assault” on Indiana’s abortion regulation scheme were lifted Monday following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that ended the constitutional right to an abortion.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals’ Monday order lifting abortion-related injunctions marks the second time in less than a month that a federal court has allowed Indiana abortion restrictions to take effect. The previously enjoined laws included regulations regarding surgical and chemical abortions and abortion facilities requirements, among others.
“Our team has fought long and hard in this case as part of our larger effort to build a culture of life in Indiana,” Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said in a Monday news release. “With the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs case, it is clear that life is winning.”
The case at the 7th Circuit, Whole Woman’s Health Alliance, et al. v. Todd Rokita, et al., 21-2480 and 21-2573, began in 2018 and eventually became what Rokita called a “full-scale assault on Indiana’s slate of abortion laws.”
Last year, Senior Judge Sarah Evans Barker of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana handed down a 158-page order that allowed several Indiana abortion regulations to take effect but enjoined several others. The enjoined laws included:
- A telemedicine ban prohibiting health care providers from using telemedicine to prescribe an abortion-inducing drug.
- An in-person examination requirement, requiring physicians to “examine a pregnant woman in person” before providing a medication abortion.
- A physician-only law allowing only physicians to perform or prescribe a medication abortion.
- A second-trimester hospitalization requirement restricting the provision of second-trimester abortions to hospitals or ambulatory surgical centers.
- Mandatory disclosures regarding fetal pain, the beginning of life and the mental health risks of abortion.
- An in-person counseling requirement for all preabortion counseling.
- Various facility requirements.
The state sought a stay of the injunction against five of those laws — the physician-only law, the second-trimester hospitalization requirement, the in-person counseling requirement, the telemedicine ban and the in-person examination requirement — but Barker declined to impose a stay.
The 7th Circuit, however, imposed the stay last September, although Judge Diane Wood issued a biting dissent saying the laws “piously purport to protect women’s health” while “chip(ping) away” at “longstanding abortion precedent.”
The case went back to the 7th Circuit in January, when the panel questioned whether it should act on the Indiana case while the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was pending. One day after the arguments, the appellate court entered an order placing the consolidated case in abeyance pending Dobbs.
When Dobbs was handed down last month, overturning Roe v. Wade and sending abortion regulations back to the states, Rokita began asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana to lift multiple injunctions against state abortion laws.
Last week, Barker lifted the injunction against a 2019 law that prohibited a second-trimester abortion procedure called dilation and evacuation, also known as “dismemberment abortion.”
The 7th Circuit followed suit Monday, vacating Barker’s ruling in the Whole Woman’s Health case.
“This court does not now address the district court’s rulings based on the First Amendment, because they were influenced by pre-Dobbs decisions holding that abortion is a fundamental right,” according to the unsigned 7th Circuit order. “The District Court should reconsider all claims in the litigation in light of Dobbs and the government-speech doctrine of Pleasant Grove v. Summum, 555 U.S. 460 (2009), and Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc., 576 U.S. 200 (2015).
“Any appeals from the decision on remand will return to this panel,” the order concludes. The panel includes Wood, Jude Frank Easterbrook and Senior Judge Joel Flaum.
As the state continues to seek the lifting of abortion-related injunctions, Rokita said, “… (W)e will stay relentless in doing the right thing for unborn babies and their mothers’ well-being.”
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