Granting a victory to Hoosier Jews for Choice, an Indiana appellate court has ruled that the state’s religious-freedom law takes precedence over the state’s restrictions on abortion when individuals “engage in a religious exercise by pursuing an abortion.”
“The State has provided little authority—and none that we find persuasive—to support the more restrictive view that religious exercise does not encompass the pregnancy terminations at issue here,” the court ruled. “If a corporation can engage in a religious exercise by refusing to provide abortifacients—contraceptives that essentially abort a pregnancy after fertilization—it stands to reason that a pregnant person can engage in a religious exercise by pursuing an abortion.”