SOUTH BEND — A nonprofit that is trying to open an abortion clinic here has filed a lawsuit challenging dozens of Indiana’s abortion restrictions.
Texas-based Whole Woman's Health Alliance is among three plaintiffs that filed a complaint for the civil lawsuit Thursday in U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Indiana.
“...Indiana has enacted abortion restriction on top of abortion restriction, further and further curtailing the constitutional right to an abortion,” the lawsuit says. “The State has replaced reasonable health and safety rules with unreasonable ones that are more likely to harm patients. Ideological opposition to abortion has supplanted concerns about patient health. The result has been the slow and steady legislative chipping away at the right to abortion.”
Other plaintiffs in the suit are Bloomington-based All-Options Pregnancy Resource Center, a nonprofit that advocates for reproductive justice, and Dr. Jeffrey Glazer, medical director of the proposed abortion clinic on South Bend’s west side. He is an obstetrician-gynecologist who is licensed to practice in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio.
Defendants named in the complaint are state Attorney General Curtis Hill, state Health Commissioner Kristina Box, Medical Licensing Board of Indiana President John Strobel and St. Joseph County Prosecutor Ken Cotter.
The lawsuit comes as the founder of Whole Woman’s Health Alliance, Amy Hagstrom Miller, has objected to how the Indiana State Department of Health has handled the nonprofit’s attempt to open a clinic in South Bend that would provide medication-induced abortions for women who are up to 10 weeks pregnant.
The department rejected the nonprofit’s license application in January, saying that it failed to meet the requirement of having “reputable and responsible character” and didn’t disclose necessary information. The nonprofit appealed the decision in January, but it is still waiting for a judge to decide on it.