INDIANAPOLIS — A federal judge has struck down an Indiana law that would have required reports from medical providers to the state if they treat women for complications arising from abortions. The law made failure to do so a misdemeanor punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.
The ruling from U.S. District Judge Richard Young came two years after he blocked the law from taking effect following its 2018 passage by the Republican-dominated state Legislature.
Young sided with Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky in its challenge to the law. He ruled that the law was "unconstitutionally vague" because it didn't give doctors clear guidance on when they would have to report complications such as a woman's depression or trouble with a later pregnancy.
“The statute simply lacks any standard to guide physicians in determining whether a condition qualifies as an abortion complication for purposes of reporting,” Young wrote. “The indeterminacy of the statute’s requirements denies fair notice to physicians and invites arbitrary enforcement by prosecutors.”
The state attorney general’s office defended the law, telling Young that the reporting requirement “serves the public interest by collecting comprehensive data on the complications that may result from abortion and the frequency of those complications.”
Hannah Brass Greer, chief legal counsel for Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, said the reporting requirement “has no basis in science and medicine.”
“The reporting requirements set by this law are another attempt by Indiana politicians to shame and stigmatize people seeking abortion services and to spread the myth that abortion is dangerous,” she said in a statement.
Young upheld another provision in the 2018 law that requires annual inspections of abortion clinics.
Planned Parenthood argued that the law would treat abortion clinics unfairly because hospitals and surgery centers would not face the same requirement.
But Young cited the state’s argument that such annual inspections might have uncovered misconduct earlier by Dr. Ulrich Klopfer, who operated abortion clinics in Fort Wayne, Gary and South Bend before his medical license was revoked in 2015. After Klopfer died last year, authorities found more than 2,400 preserved sets of fetal remainsat his suburban Chicago properties.
Young ruled that Planned Parenthood’s equal protection rights weren’t violated because “the state has offered a rational reason for the decision to subject abortion clinics to stricter inspection requirements.”
This report was prepared by the Associated Press and will be updated.
