The state’s new abortion law is on hold while a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood and several organizations, plays out in court.
Judge Kelsey Hanlon, a special judge in Monroe County, issued an injunction Thursday, as requested by the ACLU and suing parties, that temporarily blocks the law.
This week Ken Falk, an attorney who also serves as legal director for the ACLU Indiana, argued before the judge that Indiana’s constitution implies a right to privacy as a core value, and that within that right, is privacy about a woman’s decision to have an abortion.
That is essentially the same principle upon which the Roe. v. Wade decision was made 49 years ago, that made abortion a constructional right, until that decision was overturned this year in the Dobbs case.
“The Monroe County Circuit Court’s decision for a preliminary injunction on the abortion ban today underscores what we all know: every Hoosier has a fundamental right to privacy,” said Lauren Ganapini, executive director for the Indiana Democratic Party
“Only a woman and her doctor should make personal health care decisions, not politicians, and it’s reassuring to see the decision show Hoosiers that the Indiana Republican Party’s effort to ban a legal and safe abortion has crossed the line. But the loser today continues to be taxpayers who at minimum have spent $240,000 to carry out the GOP’s extremist agenda. Enough is enough: A vote for Democrats is a vote to repeal the dangerous abortion ban and we urge all Hoosiers to support pro-choice candidates up and down the ballot this November.”
An attorney representing the state argued that since the state constitution did not specifically state there is a right to privacy, it essentially does not exist.
1 comment
Regardless of your stance on abortion, the argument itself is flawed. These same lefties are happy to have background checks, permits, and registration lists for the Second Amendment, and explicitly enumerated right to bear arms in addition to stacks of intrusive regulations and limits. Doesn’t the same “right to privacy” apply there? Hypocrites.
At the end of the day, the right to privacy doesn’t protect anyone from the consequences of committing a crime. If abortion itself was legal, you would have the right to privacy about getting one but the inverse is not true. Do I have the right to privacy about robbing banks or stealing cars? “Sorry officer, you can’t arrest me for grand theft auto because I have a right to privacy” has got to be one of the dumbest lines ever, but that is literally the argument the pro-abortion crowd is trying to use here.