Indiana appeals abortion ruling allowing religious exception INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has appealed a Marion County court decision granting religious exceptions to the state’s near-total abortion ban. Thursday’s order creates an exception to Indiana’s abortion restrictions if terminating a pregnancy aligns with a woman’s “sincere religious beliefs.” The Republican attorney general’s filing to appeal the order looks to bypass the Indiana Court of Appeals and take the issue to the Indiana Supreme Court.  “Disappointed and sad by it, because I thought we were headed in the right direction,” Noblesville mother Kim Wright said outside an Indianapolis Planned Parenthood.  Wright is one of a handful of anti-abortion protesters with Sidewalk Advocates for Life, who demonstrate outside the building every week because of their religious views that abortion is murder. “I believe that all human beings are created in the image of God and thus have the right to be born.”  The state’s abortion law that passed in 2022 already provided exceptions in situations of rape, incest, when it’s necessary to avoid a “serious health risk” to the mother, and when there’s a diagnosed “lethal fetal anomaly” that would lead to the child’s death within three months of birth.  “Using religion as a reason (to access abortion) is almost mind-boggling,” Larry Kunkel of Sidewalk Advocates for Life said. The Marion County judge, Christina Klineman, concluded in her ruling that if Indiana provides any exceptions to its abortion law, it can’t avoid providing religious exceptions. “The state’s articulated interest is in ‘protecting prenatal life.’ The fact that the abortion law expressly allows for abortion in other circumstances … demonstrates the lack of a compelling interest in ‘protecting life’ under all circumstances.” The ACLU of Indiana filed the class-action lawsuit leading to the new religious exception, which also covers women who do not follow an organized religion. Legal Director Ken Falk of the ACLU told News 8 that abortion providers will need to figure out a way to certify religious exceptions. It could be similar to the way some jurisdictions evaluate religious exceptions for certain vaccines. “This is hardly something unusual.” Stevie Pactor, the senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Indiana, said in a statement that Thursday’s “ruling is a recognition that religious freedom protects people of many faiths and beliefs, not just those favored by the state.” Outside the Planned Parenthood, surrounded by her three children, Wright did not understand how any religion would sanction abortions. “If people are using religion to get an abortion, then they are not following a religion.” Even as faith drives Wright to protest, faith may be the reason others can access the thing she’s protesting. ...read more read less