A Chicago-based federal appeals court ruled Thursday that an Indiana law prohibiting abortions based on the sex or race of a fetus, or a disability, is unconstitutional.
A three-judge panel for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling from a federal district court last year that struck down three parts of the law, signed by then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence in 2016. The lower court blocked the state from enforcing the provisions, and the federal appeals court affirmed the ruling.
In its ruling Thursday, the court cited the Supreme Court’s decision in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, which affirmed Roe v. Wade and established that states cannot enact abortion restrictions that place an “undue burden” on a woman seeking an abortion.
“The non-discrimination provisions clearly violate well-established Supreme Court precedent holding that a woman may terminate her pregnancy prior to viability, and that the state may not prohibit a woman from exercising that right for any reason,” wrote Judge William Bauer, who was nominated by President Gerald Ford.
The Indiana law at issue in the case, called the Sex Selective and Disability Abortion Ban, prohibits a woman from obtaining an abortion solely based on the sex of the fetus, the fetus’s “race, color, national origin, or ancestry,” or because the fetus has been diagnosed with Down syndrome or another disability.
The law also required abortion providers to inform women seeking an abortion that “Indiana does not allow a fetus to be aborted solely because of the fetus’s race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, or diagnosis or potential diagnosis of the fetus having Down syndrome or any other disability.”
The state said the nondiscrimination provisions were prompted by technological advancements that “allow for the detection of disabilities at an early stage in the pregnancy,” according to court filings.
After Pence, now vice president, signed the measure into law, Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky sued the state, claiming it was unconstitutional. The law was set to take effect July 1, 2016.
“The Supreme Court has been clear: the state may inform a woman’s decision before viability, but it cannot prohibit it,” Bauer wrote for the panel of GOP-appointed judges.
Two of the three judges on the panel struck down the provision regarding disposal of aborted fetuses. The third, Judge Daniel Manion, said the disposal requirement was a “legitimate exercise of Indiana’s police power.”
