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Saturday, November 26, 2005
Ind. Courts - A "ruling against women"
A "Ruling against women" is how the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette describes the Indiana Supreme Court's decision last week in the case of Clinic for Women v. Carl Brizzi (11/23/05) - see earlier ILB entries at 11/23/05 and 11/24/05. Some quotes from today's editorial:
The Indiana Supreme Court’s disappointing decision to uphold the state’s abortion waiting period appears to end the challenges to a law that unfairly restricts a woman’s right to privacy. Hoosiers should be worried about how state legislators might next impose themselves in private medical decisions.The all-male state court voted 4-1 to uphold the waiting period, which requires women to receive counseling from a medical professional – in person – and then wait 18 hours before undergoing an abortion. Other states have waiting periods but allow women to receive counseling by phone. * * *
Only five of Indiana’s 92 counties have abortion clinics. Only one of those clinics – in Bloomington – is south of U.S. 40.
The law places a burden on women seeking abortions that it places on no one else. The state doesn’t ask men seeking vasectomies to undergo counseling and wait 18 hours before having the procedure. It doesn’t ask anyone seeking plastic surgery to travel to a clinic, to be advised that they are about to alter what God provided and then wait 18 hours before surgery.
Justice Theodore Boehm, in his dissenting opinion, correctly frames the issue: “I believe the Court of Appeals correctly held that the inalienable right to liberty enshrined in Article I, Section 1 of the Indiana Bill of Rights includes the right of a woman to choose for herself whether to terminate her pregnancy, at least where there is no viable fetus or her health is at issue,” he wrote. “I also believe the plaintiffs have alleged facts which, if they can be established, show that the statute in question imposes a material burden on the exercise of that right.”
Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 26, 2005 07:03 AM
Posted to Ind. Sup.Ct. Decisions