INDIANAPOLIS — A federal judge has ruled that several of Indiana's laws restricting abortion are unconstitutional, including the state's ban on telemedicine consultations between doctors and women seeking abortions.
The judge's ruling released Tuesday also upheld other state abortion limits that were challenged in a broad lawsuit filed by Virginia-based Whole Woman's Health Alliance in 2018 as it fought the denial of a license to open an abortion clinic in South Bend.
U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker issued a permanent injunction against the telemedicine ban and the state law requiring in-person examinations by a doctor before medication abortions.
She also permanently enjoined the state law that requires women seeking an abortion to be told human life begins when the egg is fertilized and that "objective scientific information shows that a fetus can feel pain at or before 20 weeks of postfertilization age."
Evans additionally ruled that it was unconstitutional for the state to require dissemination of a Perinatal Hospice Brochure containing the following: "Studies show that mothers who choose to carry their baby [sic] to term recover to baseline mental health more quickly than those who aborted due to fetal anomaly."
