Indiana Supreme Court declines to hear Planned Parenthood's challenge to pro-life law

The Indiana Supreme Court last week declined a request from Planned Parenthood that the court take up a case challenging a state law that protects nearly all preborn children from abortion.

Key Takeaways:

The Indiana Supreme Court upheld a lower court's ruling that the state's law protecting preborn children from abortion can stand.
The law, which went into effect in August 2023, had been challenged by the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, which wanted to expand the exceptions under which abortion is allowed.

The Backstory:

In August 2023, Indiana's Senate Bill 1, which restricts abortion in most cases, took effect. The law does have exceptions for instances in which children are conceived in rape or incest (up to 10 weeks), children diagnosed with a “lethal fetal anomaly” (before 20 weeks), or when there is a threat to the mother's life (though the intentional killing of preborn children is not necessary in these cases).

The law also requires all abortions that fall within these exceptions to take place in a hospital.

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Following the law's passage, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit seeking to have the health exceptions broadened and to remove the hospital-only requirement. In September 2024, an Indiana judge denied that request.

The ACLU and Planned Parenthood filed an appeal, but in August 2025 the Indiana Court of Appeals upheld the decision of the first judge and declined to broaden the health exceptions.

The pro-abortion organizations then petitioned the state Supreme Court to take up the case.

The Details:

In its 4-1 ruling issued May 14, the Indiana Supreme Court declined to consider the case, instead upholding the lower court's ruling that the state's law protecting nearly all preborn children from abortion could stand.

According to the Indiana Capital Chronicle, Chief Justice Loretta Rush and Justices Mark Massa, Derek Molter and Geoffrey Slaughter voted to decline to take the case, while Justice Christopher Goff was the sole dissenter.

The Court's decision was praised by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita.

“Thanks to this decision, our protections for life remain constitutional and will be enforced,” Rokita said in a social media post. “Like we’ve said before, no matter how many times Planned Parenthood tries to sue and push forward their culture of death, we will continue fighting for mothers, fathers, and the unborn.”

The ACLU of Indiana released a statement calling the state's preborn protections "political interference."

“We’re deeply disappointed that this law will continue to put pregnant people’s health at risk through narrow exceptions that fail to reflect the realities of pregnancy and medical care,” it said. “Hoosiers deserve better than political interference in these deeply personal health care decisions.”

The Bottom Line:

Though the abortion industry tries to frame abortion as a personal health care decision, each abortion ends the life of a human being who has an intrinsic right to life. There are no exceptions or circumstances that justify the killing of an innocent human.

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