BACKFIRE: Indiana judge uses Alito’s own words to block ban on reproductive healthcare
An Indiana judge ruled that abortion rights are protected under American citizens’ rights to freedom of religion, according to a ruling issued on December 7th.
Superior Court Judge Heather Welch granted a temporary injunction blocking the state’s new anti-abortion law, which recently went into effect.
And she used a 2015 bill signed into law by then-Governor Mike Pence to do it.
The group, Hoosier Jews for Choice (HJFC), along with several women of various faiths — including non-believers — who chose to stay anonymous, challenged Indiana’s 10-week abortion ban with the only exceptions being for incest and/or rape.
They claimed that it violated the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act championed by Evangelicals, conservatives, and former Vice President Pence.
In a lengthy 43-page opinion, Judge Welch agreed with the plaintiff’s assertion that their faiths precluded them from the belief that “life” begins at conception.
“This Court finds that Indiana, in its own statutes, does not endow zygotes, embryos, and pre-viability fetuses with the legal status of human being,” she wrote.
“The undisputed evidence establishes that the Plaintiffs do not share the State’s belief that life begins at fertilization or that abortion constitutes the intentional taking of a human life. To the contrary, they have different religious beliefs about when life begins, and they believe that under certain circumstances not permitted by S.E.A. 1, they would be required to receive abortions. Under the law, the Court finds these are sincere religious beliefs.“
Read the Judge’s opinion below.
Hoosier Jews for Choice, an organization that advocates for action, inside and outside of the Jewish community, “to advance reproductive justice, support abortion access, and promote bodily autonomy for all people across the state of Indiana.”
“The organization is made up of persons who believe that under Jewish law and religious doctrine, life does not begin at conception and that a fetus is considered a physical part of the woman’s body, not having a life of its own or independent right,” the judge’s order says.
HJFC believes that the right to have an abortion is desigened to prevent damage to either the physical or mental health of a woman whose expecting, according to Jewish law.
Ironically, Judge Welch, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s own opinion in 2014’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case — after the majority ruled in favor of the religiously affiliated arts and crafts retail chain — would be the clincher for granting the injunction.
Alito asserted that “what counts from a religious liberty standpoint is when a person believes that life begins,” Religious News reported.
Judge Welch pointed out that while Indiana’s abortion law was indeed strict, it was not all-encompassing. The state law allows abortions to be performed for secular reasons and opens the door for those performed for religious reasons — whatever that religion may be.
“To be sure, the state of Indiana contends that prohibiting the plaintiffs from having abortions would not meet the standard of “substantially burdening” their religious exercise because abortion is “a secular means to a religious end,” according to Mark Silk, the spiritual politics writer at Religious News. “But this, according to the judge, is contradicted by Hobby Lobby, where the secular means of refusing to provide employees with certain kinds of contraception coverage was recognized as a legitimate way to serve the religious end of opposing abortion,” he wrote.
The ruling, in this case, was based on not one, but two conservative precedents, turning the tables on some of the most extreme Christo-fascist members of the Republican Party.
While it may not have been what Mike Pence and Justice Alito had in mind – what’s good for the goose…
Hoosier Jews for Choice will face the defendants in this case — The Individual Members of the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana, the Marion County Prosecutor, the Lake County Prosecutor, the Monroe County Prosecutor, the St. Joseph County Prosecutor, and the Tippecanoe County Prosecutor — next month in Indiana Supreme Court where the case is set for an appeal.
Read Welch’s opinion here.
Original reporting by Mark Silk at Religious News.
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