Title: Members of the Medical Licensing Bd. v. Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai'i, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, Inc.

State: indiana

Issuer: Indiana Supreme Court

Document:

I N   T H E  
Indiana Supreme Court 
Supreme Court Case No. 22S‐PL‐338 
Members of the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana, 
et al., 
Appellants/Defendants, 
–v– 
Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i, 
Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, Inc., et al., 
Appellees/Plaintiffs. 
Argued: January 19, 2023 | Decided: June 30, 2023 
Appeal from the Monroe Circuit Court 
No. 53C06‐2208‐PL‐1756 
The Honorable Kelsey B. Hanlon, Special Judge 
Opinion by Justice Molter 
Chief Justice Rush and Justice Massa concur. 
Justice Slaughter concurs in the judgment with separate opinion. 
Justice Goff concurs in part and dissents in part with separate opinion. 
 
FILED
C L E R K
Indiana Supreme Court
Court of Appeals
and Tax Court
Jun 30 2023, 9:57 am
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Molter, Justice. 
Abortion is an intractable issue because it brings two irreconcilable 
interests into conflict: a woman’s interest in ending a pregnancy and the 
State’s interest in protecting the life that abortion would end. Pregnancy is 
a highly personal experience that can alter a woman’s life and health in 
countless ways. For some, a pregnancy may be planned, supported, or 
generally free of any significant health complications. But for others, a 
pregnancy may be unplanned, lacking significant support, or induce 
significant health complications. Given the nuance inherent in each 
woman’s experience and private life, a woman’s desire to continue or 
terminate a pregnancy is, likewise, intensely personal. At the same time, 
our laws have long reflected that Hoosiers, through their elected 
representatives, may collectively conclude that legal protections inherent 
in personhood commence before birth, so the State’s broad authority to 
protect the public’s health, welfare, and safety extends to protecting 
prenatal life.  
Last summer, the General Assembly passed, and the Governor signed, 
Senate Bill 1, which balances these interests by broadly prohibiting 
abortion but making exceptions in three circumstances: (1) when an 
abortion is necessary either to save a woman’s life or to prevent a serious 
health risk; (2) when there is a lethal fetal anomaly; or (3) when pregnancy 
results from rape or incest. Several abortion providers sued to invalidate 
the law, contending that a woman’s right to “liberty” under Article 1, 
Section 1 of the Indiana Constitution encompasses a fundamental right to 
abortion, and that Senate Bill 1 materially burdens a woman’s exercise of 
this right. On that constitutional basis, the trial court preliminarily 
enjoined the State from enforcing the law. Now, on appeal, the State seeks 
to vacate the injunction, arguing that the abortion providers lack standing; 
that Article 1, Section 1 is not judicially enforceable; and that even if it is, it 
does not protect a fundamental right to abortion.  
We first hold that the providers have standing to contest the 
constitutionality of Senate Bill 1 because the statute criminalizes their 
work, and thus they face the sort of imminent, direct, personal injury our 
standing doctrine requires. Then, after examining Article 1, Section 1’s 
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text, history, structure, and purpose, as well as our prior case law 
interpreting the provision, we hold that it is judicially enforceable. Finally, 
we hold that Article 1, Section 1 protects a woman’s right to an abortion 
that is necessary to protect her life or to protect her from a serious health 
risk, but the General Assembly otherwise retains broad legislative 
discretion for determining whether and the extent to which to prohibit 
abortions.  
Based on these holdings, we conclude the record does not support the 
preliminary injunction. The providers brought a “facial” challenge to the 
entire law, so they had to show a reasonable likelihood of success in 
proving there are no circumstances in which any part of Senate Bill 1 
could ever be enforced consistent with Article 1, Section 1. Because there 
are such circumstances, the providers cannot show a reasonable likelihood 
of success on their facial challenge. We therefore vacate the preliminary 
injunction.  
Facts and Procedural History  
I. History of Indiana’s Abortion Laws 
For all of Indiana’s history, abortion has been the subject of state 
lawmaking, and to the extent federal courts interpreting the Federal 
Constitution have permitted, the legislature has generally prohibited 
abortions except for pregnancies that threaten a woman’s life. Rebecca S. 
Shoemaker, The Indiana Bill of Rights: Two Hundred Years of Civil Liberties 
History, in The History of Indiana Law 193, 204–05 (David J. Bodenhamer & 
Hon. Randall T. Shepard eds., 2006). Before statehood, the territorial 
government enacted a receiving statute adopting English law as of 1607,1 
see Act of Sept. 17, 1807, ch. XXIV, in The Laws of Indiana Territory 1801-
 
1 The year 1607 was significant because it was the time of the English settlement at Jamestown. 
Ray F. Bowman, III, English Common Law and Indiana Jurisprudence, 30 Ind. L. Rev. 409, 413–14 
n.25 (1997). 
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1809 323, 323 (Francis S. Philbrick ed., 1930), which criminalized abortion 
after “quickening”—“the first felt movement of the fetus in the womb, 
which usually occurs between the 16th and 18th week of pregnancy,” 
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., 597 U.S. ----, 142 S. Ct. 2228, 2249, 213 
L. Ed. 2d 545 (2022). Indiana codified this reception provision again 
shortly after achieving statehood in 1816. Act of Jan. 2, 1818, ch. LII, § 1, 
1818 Ind. Acts 308, 308–09. 
Roughly two decades later, in 1835, the General Assembly passed its 
own statute criminalizing abortion, making it a crime to “wilfully 
administer to any pregnant woman, any medicine, drug, substance or 
thing whatever, or . . . use or employ any instrument or other means 
whatever, . . . to procure the miscarriage of any such woman, unless the 
same shall have been necessary to preserve the life of such woman.” Act 
of Feb. 7, 1835, ch. XLVII, § 3, 1835 Ind. Acts 66, 66. Then in 1852, one year 
after Indiana adopted its current Constitution, the General Assembly 
revised the statute to cover “any woman whom [the defendant] supposes 
to be pregnant.” Ind. Rev. Stat. vol. II, pt. III, ch. 6, § 36, at 437 (1852). The 
General Assembly expanded the law seven years later by prohibiting a 
“druggist, apothecary, physician, or other person selling medicine” from 
selling any “medicine . . . known to be capable of producing abortion or 
miscarriage, with [the] intent to produce abortion.” Act of Mar. 5, 1859, ch. 
LXXXI, § 2, 1859 Ind. Acts 130, 131. About twenty years after that, in 1881, 
the General Assembly raised the offense of providing an abortion from a 
misdemeanor to a felony and made it a misdemeanor for a pregnant 
woman or anyone aiding her to solicit an abortion. Act of Apr. 14, 1881, 
ch. XXXVII, §§ 22, 23, 1881 Ind. Acts 174, 177. In 1905, the legislature 
enacted a new criminal code and incorporated the 1881 statute. Act of 
Mar. 10, 1905, ch. 169, §§ 367, 368, 1905 Ind. Acts 584, 663–64. 
There were many abortion cases early in our Court’s history evaluating 
the propriety of indictments and convictions under the abortion statutes, 
see, e.g., State v. Vawter, 7 Blackf. 592, 592 (1845), but none of the 
defendants argued the General Assembly exceeded its authority under the 
Indiana Constitution or the Federal Constitution by criminalizing 
abortion. The first time our Court heard such a claim was in 1972 when we 
considered an appeal under the Federal Constitution. We concluded in 
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Cheaney v. State that there was no federal constitutional right precluding 
the State from enacting its law prohibiting abortion except when necessary 
to protect a woman’s life. 259 Ind. 138, 285 N.E.2d 265, 271–72 (1972). But a 
year later, the United States Supreme Court reached the opposite 
conclusion in Roe v. Wade, recognizing a qualified federal constitutional 
right to abortion: during the first trimester, states could not restrict 
abortion at all; during the second trimester, they could regulate, but not 
prohibit, abortion, and then only to protect maternal health; and during 
the third trimester, they could prohibit abortion except when it was 
necessary to protect a woman’s life or health. 410 U.S. 113, 164–65, 93 S. 
Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147 (1973). 
Mindful that the Federal Constitution trumps state law, and the United 
States Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Federal Constitution trumps 
our interpretation of that document, our General Assembly reformed 
Indiana’s abortion laws. But it did so under protest, explaining it revised 
the abortion laws only to comply with “recent Supreme Court decisions,” 
Pub. L. No. 322, § 1, 1973 Ind. Acts 1740, 1741, and disclaiming any 
“constitutional right to abortion on demand” or approval of “abortion, 
except to save the life of the mother,” id. at 1740. The legislature also 
continued to prohibit any abortions that federal law did not require to be 
permitted. Id. § 2, 1973 Ind. Acts at 1743–44. 
Then, in 1992, the United States Supreme Court revisited Roe. While 
reaffirming Roe’s central holding that a woman has a federal constitutional 
right to terminate a pregnancy before fetal viability, the Court abandoned 
the “rigid prohibition on all previability regulation aimed at the protection 
of fetal life” because the trimester “formulation . . . misconceives the 
nature of the pregnant woman’s interest” and “it undervalues the State’s 
interest in potential life.” Planned Parenthood of Se. Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 
833, 873, 112 S. Ct. 2791, 120 L. Ed. 2d 674 (1992). Replacing the rigid 
trimester framework was a new “undue burden” test. Id. at 878. After 
Casey, women had a federal constitutional right to abortion without undue 
interference from states before viability, but states could prohibit 
abortions after viability (so long as there was an exception for pregnancies 
which endangered a woman’s health or life), and states had a legitimate 
interest in protecting both women’s health and prenatal life from the 
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outset of pregnancy. Id. at 834. Again, Indiana reformed its laws to permit 
abortion only to the extent the United States Supreme Court required. 
Pub. L. No. 187-1995, 1995 Ind. Acts 3327, 3327–29. 
Now, the United States Supreme Court has embraced the view of our 
predecessors in Cheaney and abandoned Roe and Casey altogether, 
overturning these precedents and deciding to “return” the authority to 
regulate or prohibit abortion “to the people and their elected 
representatives” in each state. Dobbs, 142 S. Ct. at 2284. Indiana’s executive 
and legislative branches immediately seized that opportunity. During a 
special legislative session last summer, the General Assembly passed and 
the Governor signed Senate Bill 1, which prohibits abortion with three 
exceptions: when abortion is necessary either to prevent any serious 
health risk or to save a woman’s life; when there is a lethal fetal anomaly; 
or when pregnancy results from rape or incest. Ind. Code § 16-34-2-1(a). 
II. Procedural History 
A couple of weeks before Senate Bill 1 went into effect on September 15, 
2022, the plaintiffs—Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i, 
Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, Inc.; Women’s Med Group Professional 
Corporation; All-Options, Inc.; and Amy Caldwell, M.D. (collectively, 
“Plaintiffs”)—filed a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief 
against Members of the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana, the 
Hendricks County Prosecutor, the Lake County Prosecutor, the Marion 
County Prosecutor, the Monroe County Prosecutor, the St. Joseph County 
Prosecutor, the Tippecanoe County Prosecutor, and the Warrick County 
Prosecutor (collectively, the “State”). That same day, Plaintiffs moved for 
a preliminary injunction to enjoin enforcement of Senate Bill 1, arguing the 
law violated Article 1, Sections 1, 12, and 23 of the Indiana Constitution. A 
little over a week later, Plaintiffs moved for a temporary restraining order, 
which the trial court denied, allowing the law to go into effect.  
The trial court then held a hearing on Plaintiffs’ motion for a 
preliminary injunction. After the hearing, the trial court issued a detailed, 
thoughtful order on September 22. The court found that Plaintiffs were 
“unlikely to prevail on the merits of their” Article 1, Section 23 claim, 
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which asserted that Senate Bill 1’s hospital requirements for performing 
abortions discriminated against abortion providers in violation of the 
Equal Privileges and Immunities Clause. Appellants’ App. Vol. II at 39. 
The court also recognized that, during the hearing, Plaintiffs withdrew 
their Article 1, Section 12 claim that the law’s health and life exceptions 
are unconstitutionally vague. But, based on Plaintiffs’ Article 1, Section 1 
claim, the court enjoined enforcement of Senate Bill 1, which had then 
been in effect for seven days, “pending trial on the merits.” Id. at 42. 
For that claim, the trial court first found that Article 1, Section 1 
“provides judicially enforceable rights.” Id. And the court then concluded 
that Plaintiffs established a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits 
of their claim. In reaching that conclusion, the court found “a reasonable 
likelihood that decisions about family planning, including decisions about 
whether to carry a pregnancy to term[,] are included” within Section 1’s 
protections. Id. at 37. The court also found that Plaintiffs satisfied the other 
requirements for preliminary injunctive relief and granted the preliminary 
injunction. 
The State exercised its right to appeal the injunction immediately rather 
than waiting for a final judgment, see Ind. Appellate Rule 14(A)(5), and we 
accepted appellate jurisdiction under Appellate Rule 56(A).  
Standard of Review 
The resolution of this appeal hinges on the trial court’s conclusion that 
Plaintiffs satisfied the first requirement for a preliminary injunction: 
movants must establish by a preponderance of the evidence a reasonable 
likelihood of success on the merits of their claim. See, e.g., Leone v. Comm’r, 
Ind. Bureau of Motor Vehicles, 933 N.E.2d 1244, 1248 (Ind. 2010). It is well 
settled that the grant of a preliminary injunction rests within the sound 
discretion of the trial court, and our review is limited to whether the court 
abused that discretion. Apple Glen Crossing, LLC v. Trademark Retail, Inc., 
784 N.E.2d 484, 487 (Ind. 2003). One way a trial court abuses its discretion 
is by misinterpreting the law. State v. Econ. Freedom Fund, 959 N.E.2d 794, 
800 (Ind. 2011). And to the extent our analysis of the reasonable-
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likelihood-of-success requirement turns on the trial court’s interpretation 
of purely legal issues, we review those issues de novo. See Heraeus Med., 
LLC v. Zimmer, Inc., 135 N.E.3d 150, 152 (Ind. 2019).2  
Discussion and Decision 
Article 1, Section 1 of the Indiana Constitution declares that all Hoosiers 
have “certain inalienable rights” which include “life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness.” Ind. Const. art. 1, § 1. Plaintiffs contend Senate 
Bill 1 is properly enjoined because the trial court correctly concluded they 
have established a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits of their 
claim that Section 1 “confers liberty rights that guarantee Hoosiers’ ability 
to determine whether to carry a pregnancy to term.” Appellees’ Br. at 32. 
The State advances three main arguments on appeal: Plaintiffs lack 
standing; even if they have standing, Section 1 is not judicially 
enforceable; and even if Section 1 is judicially enforceable, it does not 
protect the abortion right Plaintiffs describe.  
We first hold that Plaintiffs have standing because almost all of them 
are abortion providers, and it is undisputed that Senate Bill 1 criminalizes 
their work. Then, after evaluating Article 1, Section 1’s text, history, 
structure, and purpose, we conclude that we should adhere to our 
precedents recognizing that the provision is judicially enforceable. Finally, 
we hold that Plaintiffs have not shown a reasonable likelihood of success 
on their facial challenge to Senate Bill 1, which requires them to prove 
there are no circumstances in which the law can be enforced consistent 
with Article 1, Section 1. While Section 1 protects a woman’s right to an 
abortion that is necessary to protect her life or to protect her from a 
serious health risk, the provision does not protect a fundamental right to 
abortion in all circumstances. And it is undisputed that protecting 
 
2 We are grateful for the many amici briefs which were submitted to aid the Court in 
considering the important issues before us.  
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prenatal life falls within the State’s broad authority under Article 1, 
Section 1 to protect the public’s health, welfare, and safety.  
Because Senate Bill 1 can be enforced consistent with Article 1, Section 
1, we vacate the preliminary injunction without prejudice to future, 
narrower, facial or as-applied challenges.3  
I. Plaintiffs have standing. 
Plaintiffs, almost all of which are abortion providers, asked the trial 
court to enjoin Senate Bill 1 because the law subjects them to criminal and 
regulatory penalties for assisting their patients with what Plaintiffs 
contend is a constitutionally protected liberty to terminate a pregnancy. 
As a threshold matter, the State argues Plaintiffs lack standing to make 
this claim because they are seeking to vindicate their patients’ 
constitutional rights rather than their own. We disagree.  
Standing is a doctrine deriving from our constitutional separation of 
powers. Under our tripartite system of government, the judicial branch is 
limited to exercising the “judicial power” of resolving “real issues through 
vigorous litigation.” Horner v. Curry, 125 N.E.3d 584, 589 (Ind. 2019); see 
also Ind. Const. art. 7, § 1 (assigning the “judicial power”). To ensure 
courts resolve only “real issues” rather than engage in “academic debate 
or mere abstract speculation,” Horner, 125 N.E.2d at 589, we require 
plaintiffs to show they have “standing” to present the contested issue and 
to invoke a court’s adjudicative power. That means they must 
demonstrate “a personal stake in the outcome of the litigation” and that 
they have suffered, or are in imminent danger of suffering, “a direct injury 
as a result of the complained-of conduct.” Solarize Ind., Inc. v. S. Ind. Gas & 
Elec. Co., 182 N.E.3d 212, 217 (Ind. 2022) (quotations omitted); see also 
Holcomb v. Bray, 187 N.E.3d 1268, 1286 (Ind. 2022) (“An injury must be 
personal, direct, and one the plaintiff has suffered or is in imminent 
 
3 Because we agree with the State that Plaintiffs’ facial challenge to the constitutionality of 
Senate Bill 1 fails, it is unnecessary to reach the State’s argument that the trial court 
improperly weighed the preliminary injunction factors. 
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danger of suffering.”). These requirements apply when a plaintiff seeks to 
invoke a court’s authority to determine the constitutionality of a statute. 
See, e.g., Gross v. State, 506 N.E.2d 17, 21 (Ind. 1987).  
Because “[c]onstitutional rights are personal,” a plaintiff generally lacks 
standing to contest state action that results in only a “violation of a third 
party’s constitutional rights.” Adler v. State, 248 Ind. 193, 225 N.E.2d 171, 
172 (1967). But if a statute’s enforcement imminently threatens a plaintiff 
with their own direct injury, they have standing to challenge the statute’s 
constitutionality, even if their claim is that the statute is invalid because it 
violates the rights of third parties. See generally 5 Ind. Law Encyc. 
Constitutional Law § 22 (“As a general rule, in criminal prosecutions, the 
accused has the right to question the constitutionality of the law under 
which he or she is being prosecuted.”). Here, Plaintiffs are suing to enjoin 
Senate Bill 1 not just because they believe it infringes on their patients’ 
constitutional rights, but also because, if enforced, it places them in 
immediate danger of sustaining their own direct injury from criminal 
prosecution or regulatory enforcement. That is enough for standing, and 
our Court has repeatedly reviewed the constitutionality of abortion laws 
based on abortion providers’ claims that the laws are unconstitutional 
because they violate their patients’ rights. See Clinic for Women, Inc. v. 
Brizzi, 837 N.E.2d 973, 975 (Ind. 2005); Humphreys v. Clinic for Women, Inc., 
796 N.E.2d 247, 248–49 (Ind. 2003); A Woman’s Choice-E. Side Women's 
Clinic v. Newman, 671 N.E.2d 104, 106–07 (Ind. 1996); Cheaney v. State, 259 
Ind. 138, 285 N.E.2d 265, 266 (1972).4 
Secure in our jurisdiction, we turn to whether Article 1, Section 1 
includes judicially enforceable rights and, if so, whether Plaintiffs have 
shown a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that 
there are no circumstances in which the State can enforce Senate Bill 1 
 
4 Because we find that the abortion providers have standing, we do not consider the standing 
of the remaining plaintiffs. Penn-Harris-Madison Sch. Corp. v. Joy, 768 N.E.2d 940, 945 n.4 (Ind. 
Ct. App. 2002). 
 
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consistent with the Indiana Constitution.  
II. Article 1, Section 1 is judicially enforceable.  
The State argues Plaintiffs’ Article 1, Section 1 claim fails because, 
unlike the other provisions in Indiana’s Bill of Rights, Section 1 is not 
judicially enforceable. All Section 1 does, the State says, is merely express 
“a basic philosophy of government and the relationship between the 
individual and the State, but it does not include specific protections 
against governmental overreach.” Appellants’ Br. at 35. We disagree. Our 
review of Section 1’s text, history, structure, and purpose, as well as the 
case law interpreting it, leads us to conclude (A) Section 1 is a Lockean 
Natural Rights Guarantee securing fundamental rights and limiting 
governmental authority to the police power, and (B) the provision is 
judicially enforceable.  
A. Section 1 is a Lockean Natural Rights Guarantee. 
Interpreting Article 1, Section 1 requires us to uncover “the common 
understanding of both those who framed” our Constitution “and those 
who ratified it.” Paul Stieler Enters., Inc. v. City of Evansville, 2 N.E.3d 1269, 
1272–73 (Ind. 2014) (quotations omitted). We find that common 
understanding by examining “the language of the text in the context of the 
history surrounding its drafting and ratification, the purpose and 
structure of our constitution, and case law interpreting the specific 
provisions.” Id. at 1273 (quotations omitted). As with every provision in 
the Constitution, we treat Section 1 with “particular deference, as though 
every word had been hammered into place.” Meredith v. Pence, 984 N.E.2d 
1213, 1218 (Ind. 2013) (quotations omitted).  
Article 1, Section 1 states in full:  
WE DECLARE, That all people are created equal; that they are 
endowed by their CREATOR with certain inalienable rights; that 
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that 
all power is inherent in the people; and that all free governments 
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are, and of right ought to be, founded on their authority, and 
instituted for their peace, safety, and well-being. For the 
advancement of these ends, the people have, at all times, an 
indefeasible right to alter and reform their government. 
Ind. Const. art. 1, § 1.  
The first state constitutional document to include this set of guarantees 
was the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776, which was the first bill of 
rights adopted through a popularly elected convention. Steven G. 
Calabresi & Sofía M. Vickery, On Liberty and the Fourteenth Amendment: The 
Original Understanding of the Lockean Natural Rights Guarantees, 93 Tex. L. 
Rev. 1299, 1313–14 (2015). A month after Virginia adopted its Declaration 
of Rights, Pennsylvania adopted a similar provision in its constitution. Id. 
at 1317–18. Around the same time, Thomas Jefferson used the Virginia 
provision as a model for expressing these same ideas in the Declaration of 
Independence. Id. at 1318–19.  
These provisions, known as “Lockean Natural Rights Guarantees,” 
quickly became standard in state constitutions, and they are generally 
understood as constitutionalizing the social contract theory of the English 
political philosopher John Locke. Id. at 1303–04. Locke believed that before 
forming a civil society we were in a state of nature where we all had equal 
freedom to do as we pleased so long as we did not “take away or impair 
the life, or what tends to the preservation of life, the liberty, health, limb, 
or goods of another.” John Locke, Two Treatises of Government and A Letter 
Concerning Toleration 102 (Ian Shapiro ed., Yale Univ. Press 2003) (1690). 
That freedom included natural rights: “every [person] has a property in 
[their] own person,” the “labour of [their] body,” and “the work of [their] 
hands.” Id. at 111. But we left the state of nature and entered a civil 
society, giving up some of our natural rights in exchange for better 
protection of the remaining natural rights and for the enjoyment of new 
positive rights (e.g., the right to a jury trial). See generally Michael W. 
McConnell, Natural Rights and the Ninth Amendment: How Does Lockean 
Legal Theory Assist in Interpretation?, 5 N.Y.U. J.L. & Liberty 1, 11 (2010); see 
also Price v. State, 622 N.E.2d 954, 959 (Ind. 1993) (“Under [the natural 
rights] theory, individuals are deemed to have ceded a quantum of their 
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‘natural’ rights in exchange for ‘receiving the advantages of mutual 
commerce.’” (footnote omitted) (quoting Sir William Blackstone, 
Commentaries on the Laws of England I:125 (Thomas M. Cooley ed., 3d ed. 
1884))).  
The only reason for giving up some natural rights is to better secure the 
remainder, so citizens do not relinquish natural rights beyond what is 
reasonably necessary to secure the natural rights of the broader 
community. Locke, supra, at 156–57; see also Whittington v. State, 669 N.E.2d 
1363, 1368 (Ind. 1996) (“The purpose of state power, then, is to foster an 
atmosphere in which individuals can fully enjoy that measure of freedom 
they have not delegated to government.”). For that reason, civil laws can 
“be directed to no other end but the peace, safety, and public good of the 
people,” Locke, supra, at 157,5 or what we call the “police power.” As 
George Mason, the author of the first Lockean Natural Rights Guarantee, 
explained: 
To protect the weaker from the injuries and insults of the 
stronger were societies first formed; when men entered into 
compacts to give up some of their natural rights, that by union 
and mutual assistance they might secure the rest; but they gave 
up no more than the nature of the thing required. Every society, 
all government, and every kind of civil compact therefore, is or 
ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the 
community. Every power, every authority vested in particular 
men is, or ought to be, ultimately directed to this sole end; and 
whenever any power or authority whatever extends further, or 
is of longer duration than is in its nature necessary for these 
 
5 See also Price v. State, 622 N.E.2d 954, 959 (Ind. 1993) (“This right of the majority to define and 
effect salubrious conditions is sometimes viewed as being at odds with the ability of 
individuals to pursue their personal ends. Our founders, however, perceived no dichotomy 
between individual rights and communal needs. Instead, they viewed the needs which gave 
rise to state powers as impediments to the full enjoyment of rights. State powers were thus 
intended to perform an ameliorative function and were considered liberty-enhancing when 
exercised by a properly structured republican government.” (citations omitted)). 
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purposes, it may be called government, but it is in fact 
oppression. 
Calabresi & Vickery, supra, at 1314 (quoting George Mason, Remarks on 
Annual Elections for the Fairfax Independent Company (Apr. 17–26, 
1775), in 1 Papers of George Mason 229–30 (Rutland ed., 1970)). 
Article 1, Section 1 implements this theory for our State, and it protects 
Hoosiers’ rights in at least two key respects.  
First, it guarantees certain fundamental rights. Those of course include 
rights listed throughout our Constitution, including Indiana’s Bill of 
Rights. Price, 622 N.E.2d at 959 n.4. But the “individual guarantees in our 
Bill of Rights merely help to highlight some of the particular contours of 
the state power as it has generally been delegated.” Whittington, 669 
N.E.2d at 1369 n.6. They “describe with greater particularity some of the 
personal freedoms the restriction of which would not, in the framers’ 
view, tend to advance those permissible state goals.” Zoeller v. Sweeney, 19 
N.E.3d 749, 753 (Ind. 2014) (emphasis omitted) (quotations omitted) (also 
explaining that the guarantees throughout the rest of the Bill of Rights 
“are but concrete manifestations” of fundamental rights).  
Article 1, Section 1’s fundamental rights also include unenumerated 
rights under the umbrella of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 
Ind. Const. art. 1, § 1; see Price, 622 N.E.2d at 959 n.4 (explaining that 
fundamental rights include “those which have their origin in the express 
terms of the constitution or which are necessarily to be implied from those 
terms” (emphasis added) (quotations omitted)). Those rights protect any 
interest “of such a quality that the founding generation would have 
considered it fundamental or ‘natural’”—in other words, beyond the reach 
of government. Price, 622 N.E.2d at 959 n.4. It is impossible to catalogue 
Section 1’s implicit fundamental rights, but a few examples include 
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having and raising children,6 pursuing a vocation that does not harm 
others,7 and patient self-determination.8  
Of course, the precise contours of all rights, including unenumerated 
rights, must be established through individual cases in which each right is 
described with the appropriate level of particularity to consider whether 
the founding generation would have considered the right fundamental. 
And “[a]s a matter of state constitutional law, Indiana courts have used a 
number of different standards of review, depending upon the particular 
constitutional right alleged to be infringed and the magnitude of it.” Clinic 
for Women, Inc. v. Brizzi, 837 N.E.2d 973, 982 (Ind. 2005). 
Second, Article 1, Section 1 limits governmental authority to the police 
power. Unlike the Federal Constitution, our Indiana Constitution does not 
“establish a system of expressly enumerated powers.” Whittington, 669 
N.E.2d at 1369 n.6. Instead, “power is generally vested in the legislature, 
and the outer boundary of that general power is marked by the 
requirement that it be exercised to advance ‘peace, safety, and well-
being.’” Id. (cleaned up).9  
 
6 See State v. Alcorn, 638 N.E.2d 1242, 1245 (Ind. 1994) (recognizing a fundamental right to 
“procreation”); In re R.S., 56 N.E.3d 625, 628 (Ind. 2016) (recognizing that “a parent’s interest 
in the care, custody, and control of his or her children is perhaps the oldest of the 
fundamental liberty interests” (cleaned up)). 
7 Kirtley v. State, 227 Ind. 175, 84 N.E.2d 712, 714 (1949) (“However, the personal liberty clause, 
Art. 1, § 1 of the Constitution of Indiana, or the right to pursue any proper vocation, is 
regarded as an unalienable right and a privilege not to be restricted except perhaps by a 
proper exercise of the police power of the state.”); In re Leach, 134 Ind. 665, 34 N.E. 641, 642 
(1893) (“Before the law this right to a choice of avocations cannot be said to be denied, or 
intended to be abridged, on account of sex. Certainly the framers of our constitution intended 
no such result, and surely the legislature entertained no such purpose. Instead of such results 
having been intended in this state, we find the constitution declaring that such rights are 
inalienable.” (citing Ind. Const. art. 1, § 1)). 
8 See In re Lawrance, 579 N.E.2d 32, 39 (Ind. 1991) (“Like the common law and our constitution, 
Indiana’s statutes reflect a commitment to patient self-determination.”). 
9 See generally Monrad Paulsen, “Natural Rights”-- A Constitutional Doctrine in Indiana, 25 Ind. 
L.J. 123, 143 (1950) (explaining that “[t]he guarantee of natural rights, curtailed only to the 
extent which the promotion of the public peace, safety, health or welfare requires, has become 
the basic doctrine of Indiana constitutional law”). 
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When evaluating whether state action is an appropriate exercise of the 
police power, we “confine [ourselves] to the question, not of legislative 
policy, but of legislative power.” Dep’t of Fin. Insts. v. Holt, 231 Ind. 293, 
108 N.E.2d 629, 634 (1952). To fall within the police power, a “law must 
not be arbitrary, unreasonable or patently beyond the necessities of the 
case.” Id. “If the law prohibits that which is harmless in itself, or if it is 
unreasonable and purely arbitrary, or requires that to be done which does 
not tend to promote” the police power, “it is an unauthorized exercise of 
power.” Id. So, for example, we have held the General Assembly cannot 
prohibit people from advertising their lawful business, Needham v. Proffitt, 
220 Ind. 265, 41 N.E.2d 606, 608 (1942), or require insurance agents to 
work on commission rather than salary, Dep’t of Ins. v. Schoonover, 225 Ind. 
187, 72 N.E.2d 747, 750 (1947), because those restrictions were not 
rationally related to protecting the public’s peace, safety, and well-being. 
In contrast, the General Assembly may impose professional licensure 
requirements when they are rationally related to protecting consumers 
even though such laws may limit someone’s ability to profit off their 
labor. See Ice v. State ex rel. Ind. State Bd. of Dental Exam’rs, 240 Ind. 82, 161 
N.E.2d 171, 173–75 (1959). 
There is symmetry here. While the State worries judicial enforcement of 
unenumerated rights may overreach, most of the State’s police powers are 
unenumerated too, so there should be equal concern that the State might 
view its own powers too generously. After all, our Constitution’s 
language in delegating authority to the State for promoting the “peace, 
safety, and well-being” of Hoosiers is no less capacious than its language 
guaranteeing Hoosiers’ rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness.” Ind. Const. art. 1, § 1. So, Article 1, Section 1 strikes a balance: 
it allows the State broad authority to promote the peace, safety, and well-
being of Hoosiers, but that authority goes no farther than reasonably 
necessary to advance the police power, and not at the expense of 
alienating what Hoosiers have commonly understood to be certain 
fundamental rights.  
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B. Section 1 is judicially enforceable. 
Roughly forty state constitutions now contain Lockean Natural Rights 
Guarantees, and courts in most of those states have concluded the clauses 
are judicially enforceable. Joseph R. Grodin, Rediscovering the State 
Constitutional Right to Happiness and Safety, 25 Hastings Const. L.Q. 1, 1, 22 
(1997). Several state supreme courts have recently analyzed their 
analogous provisions in addressing claims like the one before us today, 
and they all concluded those provisions are judicially enforceable. Okla. 
Call for Reprod. Just., 526 P.3d 1123, 1130 (Okla. 2023); Wrigley v. Romanick, 
988 N.W.2d 231, 240 (N.D. 2023); Planned Parenthood Great Nw. v. State, 522 
P.3d 1132, 1167–95 (Idaho 2023); Hodes & Nauser, MDs, P.A. v. Schmidt, 440 
P.3d 461, 471 (Kan. 2019). We reach the same conclusion based on our 
review of Section’s 1 text, “illuminated by history and by the purpose and 
structure of our constitution and the case law surrounding it.” Price, 622 
N.E.2d at 957. 
1. Text 
We start with the text. Section 1 says Hoosiers “declare” they have 
retained certain inalienable rights related to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness and that the government is restrained to pursuing only their 
peace, safety, and well-being. Ind. Const. art. 1, § 1. The State reads the 
word “declare” as a clue that the framers did not mean to give the courts a 
role in enforcing Section 1 because the remaining provisions of the Bill of 
Rights (and many other constitutional provisions, for that matter) use the 
word “shall” instead of “declare” when conveying specific and mandatory 
direction. Because Section 1 does not use the word “shall,” the State reads 
what Section 1 “declare[s]” as mere “sweeping declarations of 
fundamental truths,” not enforceable limits on government power. 
Appellants’ Br. at 37. We read the text differently.  
While the framers typically used the word “shall” for specific, 
mandatory direction, there are other times outside Section 1 when they 
used the word “declare.” They required that “[e]very statute shall be a 
public law[]” unless “otherwise declared in the statute itself.” Ind. Const. 
art. 4, § 27. Additionally, legislative acts can take effect before publication 
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in the counties if an emergency is “declared” in the statute’s preamble. Id. 
§ 28. And just as Section 1 declares the legal boundaries of government 
power, Article 14 “declare[s]” the State’s geographic boundaries. Ind. 
Const. art. 14, § 1.  
In any event, even when constitutions “declare” fundamental truths 
about the government, that does not mean the declarations cannot be 
judicially enforced. One example is separation-of-powers provisions. 
James Madison referred to those provisions as identifying “dogmatic 
maxims with respect to the construction of the Government; declaring that 
the legislative, executive, and judicial branches shall be kept separate and 
distinct.” 1 Annals of Cong. 454 (1789) (Joseph Gales ed., 1834). He placed 
less faith in these dogmatic maxims than he did in a constitutional 
architecture that incorporated “checks” to “prevent the encroachment 
of . . . one [branch of government] upon the other.” Id.  
But the fact that Madison placed more faith in the separate branches 
jealously guarding their powers than he did in constitutional separation-
of-powers provisions does not mean those provisions had no teeth. To the 
contrary, even though our own Constitution’s separation-of-powers 
provision conveys the typical dogmatic maxim relating to the structure of 
government, Ind. Const. art. 3, § 1, we routinely enforce the provision, see, 
e.g., Holcomb v. Bray, 187 N.E.3d 1268, 1276 (Ind. 2022). Thus, the fact that 
Section 1 “declares” inalienable rights does not render the provision 
unenforceable. 
2. Changes from the 1816 Constitution to the 1851 
Constitution 
The history and evolution of Article 1, Section 1 reveal it has always 
been understood to be enforceable. The 1816 Constitution had an analog 
to Section 1, but it was spread over two sections:  
Sect. 1st. That the general, great and essential principles of 
liberty and free Government may be recognized and unalterably 
established; WE declare, That all men are born equally free and 
independent, 
and 
have 
certain 
natural, 
inherent, 
and 
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unalienable rights; among which are the enjoying and defending 
life and liberty, and of acquiring, possessing, and protecting 
property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. 
Sect. 2. That all power is inherent in the people; and all free 
Governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for 
their peace, safety and happiness. For the advancement of these 
ends, they have at all times an unalienable and indefeasible right 
to alter or reform their Government in such manner as they may 
think proper. 
Ind. Const. of 1816 art. I, §§ 1–2. 
During the 1850–51 Constitutional Convention, the framers ultimately 
combined these two provisions into one—but not before fervent debate. 
Delegate Owen, for example, questioned whether, given the Declaration 
of Independence, an inalienable-rights provision was necessary, noting 
that “in the constitutions of several of the States it is wholly omitted.” 1 
Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Convention for the Revision of the 
Constitution of the State of Indiana 958 (1850). Though he was not alone in 
this view, id. at 966–67, 970–71, other delegates vehemently disagreed.  
Delegate Kinley, for example, implored that an inalienable-rights clause 
“should occupy a prominent place in the Constitution of a free people.” Id. 
at 964. He presciently recognized that “this grave political idea that all 
men possess the same inherent rights, is a truth too far in advance of the 
age, a truth which time will appreciate, a truth which, in practice as well 
as in theory, the world will ultimately adopt.” Id. (emphasis omitted). 
Delegate Howe similarly expressed, “[I]t is a great fundamental truth, that 
lies at the foundation of all human governments, that men possess these 
inherent and inalienable rights.” Id. at 972. And he later stated, “There is 
no means by which you can have a government of true liberty, unless you 
can restrict the sovereign power.” Id. at 974. Delegate Dunn likewise 
believed that “the very object of a Constitution is to protect the minority in 
the enjoyment of their rights—to put a restraint upon the hot blood and 
the strong arm of the majority. And unless this restraint is employed in 
[the Constitution], you leave unrestricted a power which history proves is 
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peculiarly liable to abuse.” Id. at 956. He thus wanted to “give . . . this 
sentiment the first place in our bill of rights, that our children and our 
children’s children may early learn it, and cherish it in their hearts as one 
of the fundamental principles of our government.” Id. at 957.  
Ultimately, these voices won the day, and the provision was referred to 
the committee on revision, arrangement, and phraseology. Id. at 974. The 
finalized, ratified version combined Sections 1 and 2 of the 1816 
Constitution into Article 1, Section 1. But combining the two sections was 
not intended to change the meaning or enforceability of the Lockean 
Natural Rights Guarantee. See Monrad Paulsen, “Natural Rights” -- A 
Constitutional Doctrine in Indiana, 25 Ind. L.J. 123, 128 (1950) (explaining 
that the rewording in the 1851 provision was not meant to change the 
meaning); John D. Barnhart & Donald F. Carmony, Indiana’s Century Old 
Constitution 12 (1951) (“The sections which define and protect the 
fundamental liberties and rights of the citizens were rearranged and 
restated in the new document, but there was little that was significantly 
different.”). It thus makes no difference that Section 1 in our current 
Constitution retains the word “declare” rather than omitting that word as 
the second section in the 1816 Constitution did. Combining the two 
sections also aligned with the Madisonian view that protecting 
fundamental rights and limiting government power were two sides of the 
same coin. See Letter from James Madison to George Washington (Dec. 5, 
1789), in 4 Papers of George Washington: Presidential Series 367–69 (D. 
Twohig ed., 1993); see also Randy E. Barnett, The Proper Scope of the Police 
Power, 79 Notre Dame L. Rev. 429, 483 (2004) (“In this way, Lockean 
theory provides both a powerful rationale for and an important limit upon 
the powers of government that is reflected in the police power doctrine. 
The police power is the legitimate authority of states to regulate rightful 
and prohibit wrongful acts.”). 
Indiana’s decision to retain its Lockean Natural Rights Guarantee 
adhered to the approach of all the other states which had those provisions 
at the time. See Calabresi & Vickery, supra, at 1323 (“We are not aware of 
any instance of a state convention permanently removing a Lockean 
Natural Rights Guarantee from its constitutional text between the 
Founding and 1868.”). And the above history reflects that our framers and 
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ratifiers likewise understood that Article 1, Section 1 would be judicially 
enforceable. 
3. Structure and Purpose 
Our understanding that Section 1 is judicially enforceable also aligns 
with our Constitution’s structure and purpose. Our Constitution has a 
preamble, but its framers—more than one-third of whom had legal 
training10—did not include the Lockean Natural Rights Guarantee there. 
Instead, and unlike the Federal Constitution, they made it the first section 
in our Bill of Rights. Placing the Guarantee in the Bill of Rights rather than 
a preamble suggests the framers and ratifiers intended to make the 
provision judicially enforceable along with the rest of the Bill of Rights. 
And considering that the “principal task” of the Constitution is to 
constitutionalize the Lockean theory of government, Price, 622 N.E.2d at 
959, it is no surprise that this is the first provision providing context for 
those that follow. See Barnhart & Carmony, supra, at 12.  
The State, however, worries that reading Section 1 as judicially 
enforceable will “wreak havoc on the constitutional structure” because it 
“would permit litigants to circumvent the framers’ deliberate choices 
about which rights to include in Article 1 and how to frame them,” 
allowing litigants to evade the limits of other provisions in the Bill of 
Rights by simply invoking Section 1’s “capacious reference to ‘life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness.’” Appellants’ Br. at 37. But the State has 
things backwards.  
The more particular guarantees of liberty throughout the Bill of Rights 
“are but concrete manifestations” of Article 1’s more general limiting 
principle that state power is limited to the police power and that Hoosiers 
have retained certain fundamental rights. Zoeller, 19 N.E.3d at 753 
(quotations omitted). Contrary to the State’s framing, the “Indiana 
 
10 Hon. Brent E. Dickson, Thomas A. John, & Katherine A. Wyman, Lawyers and Judges as 
Framers of Indiana’s 1851 Constitution, 30 Ind. L. Rev. 397, 397 (1997). 
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Constitution does not grant government an absolute, limitless state power 
and then withdraw discrete portions of it by specific excision.” 
Whittington, 669 N.E.2d at 1369 n.6. So the structure and purpose of our 
Constitution bolster our conclusion that Article 1, Section 1 is judicially 
enforceable.  
4. Case law 
A review of our case law applying Article 1, Section 1 leads to the same 
conclusion. We first relied on the 1816 version of Section 1 to hold that the 
Constitution prohibited slavery even in situations not contemplated in the 
more specific anti-slavery provisions provided elsewhere in the 
document, such as when Polly Strong, a woman enslaved before the State 
existed, had to be freed. State v. Lasselle, 1 Blackf. 60, 62 (1820). After 
considering “elaborate research into the origin of our rights and 
privileges, and their progress until the formation of our State government, 
in 1816,” we revealed no hesitation in relying on Section 1 to free Strong. 
Id. at 61; see also Hon. Loretta H. Rush & Marie Forney Miller, Cultivating 
State Constitutional Law to Form a More Perfect Union--Indiana’s Story, 33 
Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol’y 377, 382 (2019) (explaining that 
Section 1 “contributed to the Indiana Supreme Court’s holding in Polly 
Strong’s case that the state constitution prohibits slavery in Indiana”); 
Calabresi & Vickery, supra, at 1338 (explaining that our Court identified 
Section 1 as “critical textual support for holding that slavery was 
unconstitutional even where the slave had been purchased prior to the 
existence of the state”). 
Then, starting just a few years after Section 1 was folded into the 1851 
Constitution—and continuing in the following decades—we invalidated 
many statutes based on the provision. Those statutes included a liquor 
control act, Herman v. State, 8 Ind. 545, 556–58 (1855); Beebe v. State, 6 Ind. 
501, 510, 522 (1855), overruled on other grounds by Schmitt v. F. W. Cook 
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Brewing Co., 187 Ind. 623, 120 N.E. 19, 21 (1918);11 a statute requiring the 
weekly payment of wages, Republic Iron & Steel Co. v. State, 160 Ind. 379, 66 
N.E. 1005, 1009 (1903); a minimum wage law, Street v. Varney Elec. Supply 
Co., 160 Ind. 338, 66 N.E. 895, 896 (1903); a statute calling for a 
constitutional convention, Bennett v. Jackson, 186 Ind. 533, 116 N.E. 921, 923 
(1917); a statute prohibiting a licensed funeral director and embalmer from 
advertising his services to the public in newspapers, Needham, 41 N.E.2d at 
607; a statute fixing a county’s minimum prices that barbers could charge 
for their services and the barbers’ hours of operation, State Bd. of Barber 
Exam’rs v. Cloud, 220 Ind. 552, 44 N.E.2d 972, 980–81 (1942); a statute 
allowing only insurance agents who work on commission to sell fire and 
casualty insurance, Schoonover, 72 N.E.2d at 750; a statute prohibiting 
ticket scalping, Kirtley v. State, 227 Ind. 175, 84 N.E.2d 712, 715 (1949); an 
automobile dealer price-fixing statute, Holt, 108 N.E.2d at 633–37; and a 
statute permitting the Insurance Commissioner to refuse insurance 
licenses to those in the automobile business, Dep’t of Ins. v. Motors Ins. 
Corp., 236 Ind. 1, 138 N.E.2d 157, 165 (1956).  
As the State points out, we later overruled or narrowed some of these 
precedents, see, e.g., Schmitt, 120 N.E. at 21 (overruling our precedents 
invalidating liquor control acts), but only because we embraced a more 
expansive view of the police power, not because we concluded Section 1 
 
11 While Judge Perkins (members of our Court held the title “judge” rather than “justice” at 
the time) wrote the lead opinions in Herman and Beebe, he did not achieve a majority for his 
opinions in either case. Paulsen, supra, at 133. In 1858, after Beebe dissenters Judges Stuart and 
Gookins were replaced by Judges Worden and Hanna, the Court unanimously invalidated the 
liquor control act, although the new judges did not convey whether they agreed with Judge 
Perkins’ constitutional analysis. Id.; see also Howe v. State, 10 Ind. 423, 423 (1858) (explaining 
that it was “the unanimous opinion of the Court” that the liquor law of 1855 was 
“unconstitutional and void”); Ingersoll v. State, 11 Ind. 464, 465 (1859) (“This law went into 
operation, was acted under, and was not judicially annulled till about three years had elapsed 
from the time of its going into force. It was not annulled by the decision in Beebe v. State, 6 Ind. 
501. The Court, in that case, was equally divided upon the portion of the law inhibiting the 
retail of liquors, and left that portion of it in force, by the application of the same principle 
that had continued in operation the act of 1853, as above stated. The law was not annulled till 
the new Court came upon the bench, when, in the case of Howe v. State, 10 Ind. 423, decided 
on the 19th of June, 1858, the Court unanimously pronounced the law void.”). 
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was unenforceable. And even when we have declined to invalidate 
statutes, we have often reviewed them for their compliance with Article 1, 
Section 1. See, e.g., Madison & Indianapolis R.R. Co. v. Whiteneck, 8 Ind. 217, 
227, 236 (1856); Int’l Text-Book Co. v. Weissinger, 160 Ind. 349, 65 N.E. 521, 
522 (1902); Cleveland, C., C. & St. L. Ry. Co. v. Marshall, 182 Ind. 280, 105 
N.E. 570, 571–72 (1914); Weisenberger v. State, 202 Ind. 424, 175 N.E. 238, 
240–41 (1931); Walgreen Co. v. Gross Income Tax Div., 225 Ind. 418, 75 
N.E.2d 784, 788 (1947); Johnson v. Burke, 238 Ind. 1, 148 N.E.2d 413, 418 
(1958); State ex rel. Ind. Real Est. Comm’n v. Meier, 244 Ind. 12, 190 N.E.2d 
191, 195 (1963); Bd. of Commr’s of Howard Cnty. v. Kokomo City Plan Comm’n, 
263 Ind. 282, 330 N.E.2d 92, 100 (1975); Whittington, 669 N.E.2d at 1369; 
Moore v. State, 949 N.E.2d 343, 345 (Ind. 2011); see also Brizzi, 837 N.E.2d at 
998 (Boehm, J., dissenting) (recognizing that our appellate courts have 
sustained legislation under Section 1 “on the ground that the law reflects a 
legitimate exercise of the ‘police power’ of the state, and not on the 
ground that there is no justiciable issue or that the right to life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness has no content”). 
Granted, we have often evaluated a law’s compliance with Article 1, 
Section 1 alongside claims under other provisions of our Bill of Rights. But 
not always. On at least four occasions throughout the twentieth century, 
we held that Section 1 was an independent basis for declaring a statute 
unconstitutional. Bennett, 116 N.E. at 923; Schoonover, 72 N.E.2d at 750; 
Holt, 108 N.E.2d at 633–37; Ind. Dep’t of Env’t Mgmt. v. Chem. Waste Mgmt., 
Inc., 643 N.E.2d 331, 341 (Ind. 1994). Thus, our precedent has consistently 
recognized that Section 1 is judicially enforceable. 
In sum, a review of Article 1, Section 1’s text, changes made in the 1851 
Constitution, our Constitution’s structure and purpose, and case law 
applying the provision leads us to continue recognizing Section 1 as 
judicially enforceable. We now turn to the scope of Article 1, Section 1’s 
protections as they relate to Senate Bill 1.  
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III. Plaintiffs do not have a reasonable likelihood of 
success for their claim that Senate Bill 1 is 
facially invalid. 
“A statute challenged under the Indiana Constitution stands before this 
Court clothed with the presumption of constitutionality until clearly 
overcome by a contrary showing.” Paul Stieler Enters., Inc. v. City of 
Evansville, 2 N.E.3d 1269, 1273 (Ind. 2014) (quotations omitted). Plaintiffs 
challenge the constitutionality of Senate Bill 1 on its face rather than as 
applied to any particular set of facts, which means to obtain a preliminary 
injunction they needed to show they are reasonably likely to prove there 
are no circumstances in which Senate Bill 1 could ever be enforced 
consistent with Article 1, Section 1. Baldwin v. Reagan, 715 N.E.2d 332, 337 
(Ind. 1999). A facial challenge to a statute is “the most difficult challenge 
to mount successfully,” United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745, 107 S. Ct. 
2095, 95 L. Ed. 2d 697 (1987), because if there is “at least one circumstance 
under which the statute can be constitutionally applied,” the challenge 
fails, Zoeller v. Sweeney, 19 N.E.3d 749, 754 (Ind. 2014) (Rucker, J., 
concurring) (cleaned up).12  
Evaluating Plaintiffs’ claim requires us first to determine the common 
understanding of Section 1’s protections among those who framed and 
ratified it in 1851, and then to determine the common understanding of 
the legislators and voters who agreed in 1984 to change the reference in 
Section 1 from “men” to “people.” Paul Stieler Enters., Inc., 2 N.E.3d at 
1273. We conclude that while Section 1 precludes the General Assembly 
from prohibiting an abortion that is necessary to protect a woman’s life or 
to protect her from a serious health risk, Section 1’s protection of “liberty” 
 
12 A statute that is constitutional on its face may be unconstitutional when applied to a 
particular plaintiff. Humphreys v. Clinic for Women, Inc., 796 N.E.2d 247, 257 (Ind. 2003). 
“[U]nlike the higher burden faced by those making a facial constitutional challenge,” those 
challenging the statute as applied “need only show the statute is unconstitutional on the facts 
of the particular case.” State v. S.T., 82 N.E.3d 257, 259 (Ind. 2017) (quotations omitted).  
 
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generally permits the General Assembly to prohibit abortions that do not 
fall within one of those categories. Plaintiffs therefore cannot demonstrate 
a reasonable likelihood of success on their facial challenge to Senate Bill 1, 
and the preliminary injunction must be vacated.  
A. Article 1, Section 1 protects a woman’s right to an 
abortion that is necessary to protect her life or to protect 
her from a serious health risk. 
Plaintiffs emphasize that abortion procedures are sometimes their only 
means to save their patients’ lives. That is undisputed, and we agree the 
Constitution—including Article 1, Section 1—does not permit the General 
Assembly to prohibit abortion in those circumstances. But that is not a 
basis for enjoining the entirety of Senate Bill 1 in all circumstances, 
including when abortion is unnecessary to protect a woman’s life or to 
protect her from a serious health risk.  
Article 1, Section 1 expressly protects an “inalienable” right to “life,” 
which was a firmly established right long before Indiana became a state. 
See generally Eugene Volokh, State Constitutional Rights of Self-Defense and 
Defense of Property, 11 Tex. Rev. L. & Pol. 399, 401–07 (2007). That right to 
protect one’s own life extends beyond just protecting against imminent 
death, and it includes protecting against “great bodily harm.” Larkin v. 
State, 173 N.E.3d 662, 670 (Ind. 2021). Although the State disputes that 
Article 1, Section 1 is judicially enforceable, it recognizes that 
governmental authority is limited to the police power, and it 
acknowledges “grave doubt” that the police power would permit the State 
to prohibit an abortion that was necessary to save a woman’s life. Oral 
Argument at 17:22–17:37. 
Because this fundamental right of self-protection—whether considered 
as an exercise of the right to life, an exercise of the right to liberty, a 
limitation on the scope of the police power, or as a matter of equal 
treatment—is so firmly rooted in Indiana’s history and traditions, it is a 
relatively uncontroversial legal proposition that the General Assembly 
cannot prohibit an abortion procedure that is necessary to protect a 
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woman’s life or to protect her from a serious health risk. See, e.g., Dobbs v. 
Jackson Women’s Health Org., 597 U.S. ----, 142 S. Ct. 2228, 2305 n.2, 213 L. 
Ed. 2d 545 (2022) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (“Abortion statutes 
traditionally and currently provide for an exception when an abortion is 
necessary to protect the life of the mother.”); see generally Eugene Volokh, 
Medical Self-Defense, Prohibited Experimental Therapies, and Payment for 
Organs, 120 Harv. L. Rev. 1813, 1825 (2007) (demonstrating that, and 
explaining why, “the abortion-as-self-defense right is largely 
uncontroversial”).  
Reflecting that understanding, all of Indiana’s abortion statutes since 1851 
have recognized an exception for abortions that are required to protect a 
woman’s life. Even when the General Assembly revised the abortion laws in 
response to Roe and made clear it was not agreeing there is “a constitutional 
right to abortion on demand” or that it “approves of abortion,” it also made 
clear that it continued to conclude that abortion should remain available “to 
save the life of the mother.” Pub. L. No. 322, § 1, 1973 Ind. Acts 1740, 1740. 
And now that the United States Supreme Court has returned broad 
discretion to the states to determine the legality of abortion, Senate Bill 1’s 
general abortion ban continues to recognize an exception for “when 
reasonable medical judgment dictates that performing the abortion is 
necessary to prevent any serious health risk to the pregnant woman or to 
save the pregnant woman’s life.” Ind. Code § 16-34-2-1(a)(1)(A)(i); see also id. 
§ -1(a)(3)(A). 
Accordingly, Article 1, Section 1 protects a woman’s right to an 
abortion that is necessary to protect her life or to protect her from a 
serious health risk. Yet, this holding does not support Plaintiffs’ claim for 
a preliminary injunction. That is because they framed their claim as a 
facial challenge to the entire statute in all conceivable circumstances rather 
than an as-applied challenge to the law’s application in any particular set 
of circumstances where a pregnancy endangers a woman’s life or health. 
So this appeal does not present an opportunity to establish the precise 
contours of a constitutionally required life or health exception and the 
extent to which that exception may be broader than the current statutory 
exceptions. Cf. Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124, 167, 127 S. Ct. 1610, 167 L. 
Ed. 2d 480 (2007) (“In an as-applied challenge the nature of the medical 
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Page 28 of 43 
risk can be better quantified and balanced than in a facial attack.”). For 
purposes of this appeal, all we can say is that Senate Bill 1 is not facially 
invalid as interfering with a woman’s access to care that is necessary to 
protect her life or health.13  
To enjoin the statute as a whole in all circumstances, then, Plaintiffs had 
to show that Article 1, Section 1’s protection of “liberty” establishes a 
woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy in all circumstances, precluding 
the General Assembly from prohibiting any abortion. As we explain next, 
Article 1, Section 1, does not foreclose that legislative discretion.  
B. The General Assembly retains legislative discretion to 
prohibit abortions that are unnecessary to protect a 
woman’s life or to protect her from a serious health risk.  
Article 1, Section 1 protects a fundamental right to “liberty.” Plaintiffs 
contend this covers “a bundle of liberty rights”—including unenumerated 
rights to privacy, bodily autonomy, and self-determination—which 
coalesce to protect a fundamental right to abortion up to the point in a 
pregnancy when a fetus would be viable outside the womb (around 23 or 
24 weeks). Appellees’ Br. at 31. In other words, Plaintiffs’ claim depends 
on the Indiana Constitution protecting the same abortion right the United 
States Supreme Court recognized in Roe and Casey before recently 
overruling those decisions in Dobbs. We conclude that was not how Article 
1, Section 1’s framers and ratifiers understood the provision, and the 1984 
amendment changing references throughout the Constitution to gender 
 
13 The dissent believes that by acknowledging the General Assembly cannot prohibit abortions 
that are necessary to protect a woman’s life or to protect her from a serious health risk, we are 
“effectively inviting the legislature to repeal” the statutory exceptions for lethal fetal 
anomalies and pregnancies resulting from rape and incest. Post, at 16 (opinion of Goff, J.). We 
convey no such invitation, and we do not urge the General Assembly to pursue or decline any 
particular public policy approach. Plaintiffs invoked a woman’s right to protect her own life 
and health as a basis for enjoining the law on its face. The statutory exceptions unrelated to a 
pregnant woman’s life or health are not at issue for Plaintiffs’ facial challenge, and the parties 
have not addressed whether our Constitution compels those exceptions, so we do not address 
those distinct questions.  
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neutral terms did not create a constitutionally protected abortion right 
either.  
1. The framers and ratifiers understood Article 1, 
Section 1 as generally leaving abortion within the 
General Assembly’s broad legislative discretion. 
Plaintiffs argue abortion is a fundamental right necessarily implied in 
the protection of liberty. To recognize an unenumerated, implied right, we 
must conclude the right is “of such a quality that the founding generation 
would have considered it fundamental or ‘natural.’” Price v. State, 622 
N.E.2d 954, 959 n.4 (Ind. 1993). That is because what gives our 
Constitution force is that it reflects an agreement reached through the 
constitutional framing, ratifying, and amendment processes. So we cannot 
supplant what the framers and ratifiers believed they were agreeing to 
with our own notions of which aspects of liberty ought to be off limits for 
the legislative process, or our notions of which aspects of liberty we 
suspect voters today might embrace as worthy of heightened 
constitutional protections if asked. This also means we do not analyze 
whether liberty, privacy, autonomy, self-determination, and abortion 
relate to each other in a colloquial sense. Rather, our task is to discern the 
contours of constitutionally protected liberty as Section 1’s framers and 
ratifiers understood them, and then to decide whether that common 
understanding of liberty leaves the General Assembly discretion to 
generally prohibit abortions that are unnecessary to protect a woman’s life 
or health.  
Indiana’s long history of generally prohibiting abortion as a criminal 
act—coupled with Plaintiffs’ acknowledgment that protecting prenatal life 
falls within the State’s broad authority to protect the public’s health, 
welfare, and safety—suggests that the common understanding among 
Article 1, Section 1’s framers and ratifiers was that the provision left the 
General Assembly with legislative discretion to regulate or limit abortion. 
Even before statehood, Indiana’s territorial law prohibited abortions after 
quickening, and for the entire period between the ratification of the 1851 
Constitution and the passage of Senate Bill 1, Indiana prohibited abortions 
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Page 30 of 43 
at all stages of the pregnancy to the extent the federal courts interpreting 
the Federal Constitution permitted. Supra, at 3–6. Since shortly after the 
ratification of the 1851 Constitution, many appellate decisions have 
evaluated the propriety of indictments and convictions under the abortion 
statutes in effect, “and none of the resulting opinions even hinted at any 
concern that the statute violated Section 1 or any other provision in the 
Indiana Constitution.” Clinic for Women, Inc. v. Brizzi, 837 N.E.2d 973, 990 
(Ind. 2005) (Dickson, J., concurring) (collecting authority).  
Our Court did not confront a claim that there was a fundamental right 
to abortion until 1972, and that claim related only to the Federal 
Constitution. Cheaney v. State, 259 Ind. 138, 285 N.E.2d 265, 266 (1972). Our 
predecessors in that case rejected the argument, explaining that courts had 
for centuries “recognized the property rights of an unborn child without 
regard to the state of gestation” and that an “infant” in “the mother’s 
womb[] is supposed in law to be born for many purposes.” Id. at 267 
(quotations omitted). After acknowledging that English common law only 
criminalized abortion after quickening, the Court explained the distinction 
was no longer significant because quickening was just “a short-hand 
method for the common law to establish the point in time when the 
unborn child first became a living being.” Id. at 268. “[T]he first time the 
mother felt movement” reflected “the first manifestations of life separate 
and distinct from the mother.” Id. But “medical science has made great 
strides since that time and quickening can no longer be considered the 
point at which independent life begins.” Id.  
It was almost 200 years after Indiana achieved statehood that our Court 
first had a case presenting the question whether Article 1, Section 1 
protected a fundamental right to abortion, and we did not decide the 
question because it was unnecessary for resolving the appeal. Brizzi, 837 
N.E.2d at 978. The lone dissent in that case concluded Section 1 protects a 
fundamental right to abortion, but that opinion acknowledged “it is fair to 
assume that no delegate to the Convention believed that, by adopting 
Section 1, the framers were creating a right in pregnant women to choose 
to terminate their pregnancies.” Id. at 999 (Boehm, J., dissenting). 
Dobbs exhaustively surveyed common law authorities leading up to the 
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time of Indiana’s founding, and those authorities also confirm there was 
no common understanding of a fundamental right to abortion. 142 S. Ct. 
at 2249–51. 
Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in 
American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. No 
state constitutional provision had recognized such a right. Until 
a few years before Roe was handed down, no federal or state 
court had recognized such a right. Nor had any scholarly treatise 
of which we are aware. And although law review articles are not 
reticent about advocating new rights, the earliest article 
proposing a constitutional right to abortion that has come to our 
attention was published only a few years before Roe. 
Id. at 2248 (footnote omitted).  
The dissent believes we misunderstand or oversimplify this history in 
four respects, but the critiques confirm rather than refute our conclusion. 
Post, at 11–14 (opinion of Goff, J.). We set aside for a moment our differing 
view of the historical record and assume each of the dissent’s historical 
descriptions are correct: (1) Indiana first criminalized abortion 188 years 
ago rather than 215 years ago; (2) one motivation for earlier abortion laws 
was that abortion was unsafe for women; (3) early Indiana law recognized 
the unborn as a person with rights separate from the pregnant woman 
only after she first felt a fetal movement (“quickening”); and (4) a failed 
legislative effort in 1967 to legalize abortion demonstrates that legislative 
views of abortion have shifted over time. Id. All those points illustrate that 
for as long as the 1851 Constitution has been in force, Indiana has always 
delegated to the General Assembly the responsibility for determining 
whether and what degree to limit abortion, and Indiana has not treated 
abortion as a fundamental right.  
For their part, Plaintiffs acknowledge Indiana’s history of prohibiting 
abortion, but they urge us to view that history, along with the term 
“liberty,” through a lens focused on women’s equality, mindful that 
constitutions must be applied in evolving times of social progress. With 
that much, we agree. There is no question that, in 1851, women were not 
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treated as equal participants in Indiana’s civic and political society. And 
since 1851, women in Indiana have encountered substantial obstacles in 
progressing toward equality in legal, political, civic, and other societal 
arenas. Equally true, only women endure pregnancy’s greatest burdens, 
which are undeniably varied.  
We do not diminish a woman’s interest in terminating a pregnancy 
because, for starters, it is a privately held interest—informed by privately 
held considerations. Moreover, we recognize that many women view the 
ability to obtain an abortion as an exercise of their bodily autonomy. Yet, 
and however compelling that interest is, it does not follow that it is 
constitutionally protected in all circumstances.  
In determining whether our Constitution protects a woman’s interest in 
obtaining an abortion when not necessary to protect her life or health, 
Plaintiffs concede a legitimate, competing interest: the State’s interest in 
protecting prenatal life. This interest reflects a legislative view that legal 
protections inherent in personhood commence before birth. And the State 
points to biological markers consistent with this conclusion—including 
fetal brain development, a heartbeat, and breathing—which lead the State 
to emphasize that “unborn children, being human beings, have all the 
characteristics of a human being,” and many of those characteristics are 
“acquired in the earliest stages of pregnancy.” Appellants’ Br. at 57 
(emphasis omitted). Considerations like those have led to a broad legal 
consensus—which Plaintiffs join—that there is at least some point in the 
pregnancy before birth when the State may generally prohibit abortions 
(with life and health exceptions), notwithstanding a woman’s interest in 
terminating that pregnancy.  
State governments around the country and governments around the 
world take varied approaches to balancing a woman’s interest in 
terminating a pregnancy against the government’s interest in protecting 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
Page 33 of 43 
the prenatal life that abortion would terminate.14 Many take Indiana’s 
approach, generally prohibiting abortions with exceptions. Many others 
take the approach Plaintiffs propose, banning abortions only after 23 or 24 
weeks, when the fetus would be viable outside the womb. Others take an 
approach in between, banning abortions at various gestational limits—
including 6 weeks, 15 weeks, 18 weeks, 20 weeks, or 22 weeks—based on 
considerations like the detection of a fetal heartbeat, fetal brain 
development, and when they conclude a fetus can feel pain. Some add yet 
another layer of variation with exceptions related to health, social, or 
economic considerations.  
Plaintiffs’ acknowledgment that constitutional recognition of women’s 
equality does not preclude the General Assembly from prohibiting 
abortion (at least at some point in the pregnancy) reflects that their facial 
challenge to Senate Bill 1 does not present a question about how to apply 
an old constitutional provision to unforeseen circumstances; a question 
about how to treat men and women equally; or a question about how to 
ensure women have sufficient influence in lawmaking. The question is 
whether our Constitution entrusts to the General Assembly or to our 
Court the policymaking discretion to decide which of these varied 
approaches best balances the irreconcilable interests of a woman wishing 
to terminate a pregnancy against the interest in the prenatal life that 
abortion would terminate.  
The answer, in short, is that our history and traditions reflect that 
Hoosiers have generally delegated this responsibility to the General 
Assembly, which—as a legislative body with representatives in both 
 
14 For surveys of the laws discussed in this paragraph, see Allison McCann et al., Tracking the 
States Where Abortion is Now Banned, N.Y. Times, 
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html 
[https://perma.cc/X9Z3-DDPZ] (June 5, 2022, 11:00 AM); State Bans on Abortion Throughout 
Pregnancy, Guttmacher Inst. (June 1, 2023), https://www.guttmacher.org/state-
policy/explore/state-policies-later-abortions [https://perma.cc/XUT4-7DYC]; and The World’s 
Abortion Laws, Ctr. for Reprod. Rts., https://reproductiverights.org/maps/worlds-abortion-
laws/ [https://perma.cc/7CC8-CNJT] (last visited June 29, 2023). 
 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
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chambers constantly answerable to their constituents throughout the State 
in recurring elections—should continually recalibrate this interest-
balancing to reflect society’s contemporary views. To be sure, abortion 
legislation must still comply with the constitutional limits that apply to all 
legislation. That includes limiting governmental authority to a proper 
exercise of the police power, Ind. Const. art. 1, § 1, and forbidding the 
General Assembly from granting “to any citizen, or class of citizens, 
privileges or immunities, which, upon the same terms, shall not equally 
belong to all citizens,” id. § 23. But Hoosiers have not delegated this 
policymaking responsibility to our five-member, unelected Court, which 
does not have the institutional tools to discern Hoosiers’ divergent views 
on whether abortion generally should be legal; whether abortion’s legality 
should be subject to gestational limits, and if so, what those limits should 
be; and whether and which other exceptions should apply to abortion 
limits.  
Of course, our Constitution leaves space for contemporary attitudes to 
shape how questions unanticipated at the founding are resolved. See, e.g., 
In re Leach, 134 Ind. 665, 34 N.E. 641, 642 (1893) (“The fact that the framers 
of the constitution, or the legislators, in enacting our statute, did not 
anticipate a condition of society when women might desire to enter the 
profession of law for a livelihood cannot prevail as against their right to 
do so independently of either.”). And our Constitution presumes society 
will progress, which is why it includes an amendment process Hoosiers 
have repeatedly used (although we express no view on the political 
question presented by the dissent’s invitation for Hoosiers to exercise that 
right). But we have no commission to revise the Constitution through 
judicial interpretation, and Hoosiers’ fundamental rights are more secure 
as a result. For “[i]f we can add to the reserved rights of the people, we 
can take them away; if we can mend, we can mar; if we can remove the 
landmarks which we can find established, we can obliterate them; if we 
can change the constitution in any particular, there is nothing but our own 
will to prevent us from demolishing it entirely.” Welling v. Merrill, 52 Ind. 
350, 353 (1876). The same provision in Indiana’s Bill of Rights that 
Plaintiffs ask us to enforce—Section 1—confirms “the people have, at all 
times, an indefeasible right to alter and reform their government,” Ind. 
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Page 35 of 43 
Const. art. 1, § 1, and we cannot disregard the amendment process they 
have established for doing so. 
In sum, our State’s history and traditions, as reflected in our Court’s 
precedents, indicate that the common understanding of Section 1 among 
those who framed and ratified it was that it generally left the General 
Assembly with broad legislative discretion to limit abortion. And the 
common understanding of those who proposed and ratified the 1984 
amendment changing Section 1’s reference from “men” to “people” was 
that this change did not alter Section 1’s meaning, which we discuss next.  
2. The 1984 amendment revising the Constitution to 
use gender neutral terms did not create a 
fundamental right to abortion. 
In 1984, voters ratified an amendment to Article 1, Section 1 changing 
its statement that “all men are created equal” to say instead that “all people 
are created equal.” Again, we must determine “the common 
understanding of the proposers and ratifiers of the constitutional 
amendment.” Campbell v. City of Indianapolis, 155 Ind. 186, 57 N.E. 920, 928 
(1900). And here again, the historical evidence is clear: the amendment 
was a purely stylistic update to the Constitution, and our Court 
previously recognized “the General Assembly desired no substantive 
change.” Gallagher v. Ind. State Election Bd., 598 N.E.2d 510, 514 n.4 (Ind. 
1992). A century before the 1984 amendment, our Court had already held 
that our Constitution protects men and women equally. Leach, 34 N.E. at 
642. Changing “men” to “people” in the 1984 amendment simply better 
reflected that understanding and was further meant to avoid offense. 
Context is illuminating here. To amend our Constitution, the General 
Assembly must twice approve a proposed amendment by a majority vote 
in both chambers in successive legislative sessions, and then a majority of 
voters must ratify the amendment. Ind. Const. art. 16, § 1. The 1984 change 
to Article 1, Section 1 was one of over thirty changes to the Constitution 
proposed by a legislative Committee to Review Obsolete Provisions 
Contained in the Indiana Constitution. See Comm. to Rev. Obsolete 
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Provisions Contained in the Ind. Const., Final Report 3–5 (1981). 
The General Assembly twice approved these changes through 
legislation with bill digests describing the changes as “amend[ing] the 
Constitution of the State of Indiana by updating certain antiquated style, 
language, or provisions,” and with the legislation then specifically 
identifying each of the dozens of revisions. Pub. L. No. 231, 1982 Ind. Acts 
1658, 1658; see also Pub. L. No. 383-1983, 1983 Ind. Acts 2206, 2206. The 
1982 vote supporting the amendments was 82 to 8 in the House of 
Representatives and 42 to 2 in the Senate; the 1983 vote was 95 to 0 in the 
House of Representatives and 48 to 1 in the Senate. H. Journal, 102d Gen. 
Assemb., 2d Reg. Sess. 475 (Ind. 1982); S. Journal, 102d Gen. Assemb., 2d 
Reg. Sess. 377 (Ind. 1982); H. Journal, 103d Gen. Assemb., 1st Reg. Sess. 
429 (Ind. 1983); S. Journal, 103d Gen. Assemb., 1st Reg. Sess. 505 (Ind. 
1983). Roughly 70% of voters then approved those changes by voting 
“yes” to a ballot question phrased similarly to the bill digest, asking 
voters: “Shall the Constitution of the State of Indiana be amended by 
removing or restating certain antiquated language or provisions to reflect 
today’s conditions, practices, or requirements?” Ind. Sec’y of State, Election 
Report State of Indiana 77–78 (1984). 
For Article 1, Section 1, the Committee’s Final Report explained that the 
amendment “[s]trikes the masculine word ‘men’ because it is offensive to 
many people as used and substitutes ‘people’, because it refers to both 
males and females.” Comm. to Rev. Obsolete Provisions Contained in the 
Ind. Const., supra, § 2, at 3. The Committee likewise proposed—and the 
General Assembly and voters ultimately agreed—to change nine other 
references in similar fashion throughout the Constitution from terms like 
“men” or “man” to gender neutral terms like “people” or “person.”15 The 
 
15 See Pub. L. No. 231, § 2, 1982 Ind. Acts 1658, 1658 (amending “men” to “people” in Article 1, 
Section 1 of the Indiana Constitution); id. § 3, 1982 Ind. Acts at 1658 (similarly amending 
Article 1, Section 2); id. § 4, 1982 Ind. Acts at 1658 (amending “man” to “person” in Article 1, 
Section 4); id. § 5, 1982 Ind. Acts at 1658 (amending “man” to “person” in Article 1, Section 
12); id. § 6, 1982 Ind. Acts at 1659 (amending “man’s” to “person’s” in Article 1, Section 21); id. 
§ 19, 1982 Ind. Acts at 1662 (amending “[h]e” to “[t]he Governor” in Article 5, Section 13); id. § 
 
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amendments also removed other offensive references to race and 
disability throughout the Constitution. Id. §§ 7, 30, 32, at 3, 5. 
As for the ballot question’s reference to changes reflecting “today’s 
conditions, practices, or requirements,” both the Committee and the 
General Assembly were specific about what they were changing. For 
example, they eliminated former Article 2, Section 7, which prohibited 
those who had engaged in a duel from holding office, and the Committee 
explained they were making the change because the provision was 
“antiquated.” Id. § 10, at 3. The proposed amendments changed the 
legislative bill reading requirements “to conform to the long-standing 
practice of reading bills by title instead of by sections.” Id. § 18, at 4. And 
they struck “a phrase that has been obsolete for many years protecting the 
state from liability for events that occurred prior to 1851.” Id. § 20, at 4.  
Plaintiffs argue, and the dissenting opinion agrees, that changing the 
reference in Article 1, Section 1 from “men” to “people” reflects a common 
understanding between both the General Assembly and a majority of 
voters in 1984 that our Constitution should protect a fundamental right to 
abortion. They infer from the ballot question’s reference to “today’s 
conditions, practices, or requirements” that legislators and voters were 
contemplating Roe’s recognition of a fundamental right to abortion. But 
that is not a fair inference for a few reasons. 
Most importantly, there is no need to resort to inference at all. The 
legislation proposing the amendments specifically identified each of the 
conditions, practices, or requirements the General Assembly believed 
obsolete—provisions related to practices like dueling or to concerns like 
liability for events which occurred before 1851—and none of the changes 
had anything at all to do with abortion. Indeed, none of the changes dealt 
with anything controversial, which is why the vote to approve the 
 
20, 1982 Ind. Acts at 1662 (similarly amending Article 5, Section 16); id. § 21, 1982 Ind. Acts at 
1662–63 (similarly amending Article 5, Section 17); id. § 23, 1982 Ind. Acts at 1663 (similarly 
amending Article 5, Section 20); see also Pub. L. No. 383-1983, §§ 2–6, 19–21, 23, 1983 Ind. Acts 
2206, 2206–07, 2210–11. 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
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changes was nearly unanimous in the General Assembly. Of course, near 
unanimity would not be expected if legislators were under the impression 
they were addressing an issue that was hotly contested among their 
constituents, such as whether there should be a constitutional right to 
abortion.  
Moreover, when the General Assembly revised its statutes to conform 
to Roe, it made clear it disagreed with Roe, including in its statutory 
revisions a statement that it was revising the laws only to comply with 
“recent Supreme Court decisions,” Pub. L. No. 322, § 1, 1973 Ind. Acts 
1740, 1741, and disclaiming any “constitutional right to abortion on 
demand” or approval of “abortion, except to save the life of the mother,” 
id. at 1740. Given how contentious the abortion issue has long been, it is 
unlikely that between 1973 and 1984 the General Assembly not only 
swung from explicitly disclaiming a constitutional abortion right to 
implicitly establishing a constitutional abortion right, but it did so with 
near unanimous support and without even mentioning abortion.  
And if Hoosiers in 1984 were amending their Constitution to protect a 
fundamental right to abortion, it is likely someone would have mentioned 
it before now. Yet Plaintiffs do not point to any historical evidence—no 
public statements, newspaper articles, or law review articles—suggesting 
that either the General Assembly or voters, let alone both, understood that 
by changing “men” to “people” they were establishing a fundamental 
right to abortion under the Indiana Constitution.  
Tellingly, a group of historians and state constitutional law scholars 
submitted an amicus brief supporting Plaintiffs’ position that the 
injunction should be affirmed, and their brief does not mention the 1984 
amendment at all. The plaintiffs in Brizzi never mentioned the 1984 
amendment in their briefing to our Court either. And while the dissenting 
opinion in Brizzi concluded that our Constitution should protect an 
abortion right, the dissent did not look to the 1984 amendment to support 
that conclusion. Just the opposite, the dissent only mentioned the 
amendment in a footnote explaining that the amendment made no 
substantive change and that it had always been understood that the term 
“men” in Section 1 “was used ‘in its general sense’ and included women.” 
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Brizzi, 837 N.E.2d at 995 n.2.  
Finally, while we sometimes look to federal case law as persuasive 
authority when we interpret state law provisions that are analogous to 
federal provisions, we have not understood Hoosiers as directing us to 
adhere to United States Supreme Court opinions interpreting the Federal 
Constitution when we are tasked with interpreting our own Constitution. 
We often say just the opposite. See, e.g., Price, 622 N.E.2d at 958 (“[W]e find 
no persuasive precedent for the proposition that federal ‘overbreadth 
analysis’ has taken root in the jurisprudence of the Indiana 
Constitution.”). But even if Hoosiers had directed through the 1984 
amendment that our Court should simply proceed in lockstep with the 
United States Supreme Court’s opinions about the scope of liberty, that 
Court has now held there is no fundamental right to abortion under the 
Federal Constitution.  
In short, Plaintiffs have not identified any compelling evidence 
suggesting the framers and ratifiers who amended Section 1 in 1984 had a 
common understanding that by changing “men” to “people” they were 
creating a fundamental right to abortion, and there is overwhelming 
evidence to the contrary.  
C. Senate Bill 1 can be enforced consistent with Section 1’s 
limitation of governmental authority to advance the 
public’s health, welfare, and safety. 
Even though Article 1, Section 1’s “liberty” protection does not cover 
the broad abortion right Plaintiffs claim, the provision still restrains the 
General Assembly to legislating only to advance the police power. And 
when advancing the police power, the General Assembly may not pass 
laws which are “arbitrary” or “patently beyond the necessities of the 
case.” Dep’t of Fin. Insts. v. Holt, 231 Ind. 293, 108 N.E.2d 629, 634 (1952). In 
other words, “the means used by the General Assembly . . . must have 
some reasonable relation to the accomplishment of the end in view.” 
Hanley v. State, 234 Ind. 326, 123 N.E.2d 452, 455 (1954). When we 
undertake that review, we evaluate only the boundaries of legislative 
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power, not the wisdom of legislative policy. Holt, 108 N.E.2d at 634.  
Our precedents have long recognized that protecting prenatal life is an 
appropriate exercise of the police power, which Plaintiffs acknowledge. 
See Humphreys v. Clinic for Women, Inc., 796 N.E.2d 247, 257 (Ind. 2003) 
(holding that the State has a legitimate “interest in protecting fetal life”). 
And Plaintiffs do not argue that Senate Bill 1’s general ban on abortions 
with limited exceptions has no reasonable relation to protecting prenatal 
life. That is reason enough not to affirm the injunction on the basis that the 
law is unconstitutionally arbitrary.  
None of this is to comment on whether the General Assembly’s 
approach has been wise or unwise, just or unjust, moral or immoral. We 
simply recognize that enjoining Senate Bill 1 as a facially arbitrary law 
would not be an appropriate exercise of our judicial review power. 
Because there are circumstances in which Senate Bill 1 can be enforced as a 
proper exercise of the State’s police power, Plaintiffs cannot show a 
reasonable likelihood of success on the merits of their facial challenge.  
IV. Vacating the injunction does not preclude future 
facial or as-applied challenges. 
We are mindful that today’s decision does not end the litigation on 
Plaintiffs’ remaining claim that Senate Bill 1’s hospital requirements for 
performing abortions discriminate against abortion providers in violation 
of Article 1, Section 23’s Equal Privileges and Immunities Clause, which is 
not part of this appeal. And the decision will not foreclose future abortion 
litigation in Indiana more broadly. By saying Senate Bill 1 is not 
unconstitutional in its entirety in all circumstances, we do not say the 
opposite either—that every single part of the law can be applied 
consistent with our Constitution in every conceivable set of circumstances. 
We do not prejudge those questions.  
So, while Plaintiffs’ facial challenge to the entire statute fails, that does 
not preclude plaintiffs with standing from pursuing a facial challenge to a 
particular part of the statute, or an as-applied challenge to the State 
enforcing the law in a particular set of circumstances. See League of Women 
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Page 41 of 43 
Voters of Ind., Inc. v. Rokita, 929 N.E.2d 758, 760 (Ind. 2010) (“Determining 
that this case presents only facial challenges to the constitutionality of the 
Voter ID Law, we now affirm the trial court’s dismissal of the complaint, 
but without prejudice to future as-applied challenges by any voter 
unlawfully prevented from exercising the right to vote.”).  
Conclusion  
Plaintiffs, which are mostly abortion providers, have standing to 
challenge Senate Bill 1 because the law criminalizes their work and the 
injunction they seek would protect them from the law’s criminal and 
regulatory penalties. Additionally, Article 1, Section 1, which is judicially 
enforceable, protects a woman’s right to an abortion that is necessary to 
protect her life or to protect her from a serious health risk. But Section 1 
generally permits the General Assembly to prohibit abortions which are 
unnecessary to protect a woman’s life or health, so long as the legislation 
complies with the constitutional limits that apply to all legislation, such as 
those limiting legislation to a proper exercise of the police power and 
providing privileges and immunities equally. Because the State can 
enforce Senate Bill 1 within those constitutional parameters, Plaintiffs 
have failed to show a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits of 
their facial challenge. We thus vacate the preliminary injunction and 
remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.  
Rush, C.J., and Massa, J., concur. 
Slaughter, J., concurs in the judgment with separate opinion. 
Goff, J., concurs in part and dissents in part with separate opinion. 
 
 
 
 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S‐PL‐338 | June 30, 2023 
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ATTORNEYS   F OR   APPELLANTS  
Theodore E. Rokita 
Attorney General of Indiana 
Thomas M. Fisher 
Solicitor General 
James A. Barta 
Deputy Solicitor General 
Melinda R. Holmes 
Deputy Attorney General 
Indianapolis, Indiana 
ATTORNEYS   F OR   APPELLEES 
Kenneth J. Falk 
Gavin M. Rose 
Stevie J. Pactor 
ACLU of Indiana 
Indianapolis, Indiana 
ATTORNEYS   F OR   AM ICI  CURIAE  THE AMER ICAN   COLLEGE  OF  
OBSTETRICIANS AN D  GYNECOLOGISTS,  THE  AM ER ICAN 
MEDICAL  ASSOCIATION,  AND  THE SOCIETY  FOR   MA TERN A L‐
FETAL MEDICIN E  
Mark W. Sniderman 
Findling Park Conyers Woody & Sniderman, P.C. 
Indianapolis, Indiana 
Nicole A. Saharsky 
Mayer Brown LLP 
Washington, D.C. 
ATTORNEY   FOR  AMICUS  CURIAE  ER IC R AS M US EN 
Eric B. Rasmusen 
Pro Se 
Bloomington, Indiana 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S‐PL‐338 | June 30, 2023 
Page 43 of 43 
ATTORNEYS   F OR   AM ICI  CURIAE  FR EDERICK  DOUGLASS  
FOUNDATION   A ND  NATION AL HISPA NIC  CHR ISTIAN  
LEADERSHIP   CONFER ENCE 
Jared M. Schneider 
Schneider Law, P.C. 
Bloomington, Indiana 
Mathew D. Staver 
Liberty Counsel 
Orlando, Florida 
ATTORNEY   FOR  AMICI  CUR IAE  HISTORIANS  AN D  S TA T E 
CONSTITUTIONAL  L A W  S CH O L AR S 
Lauren Robel 
Val Nolan Professor of Law Emerita 
Indiana University Maurer School of Law 
Bloomington, Indiana 
ATTORNEY   FOR  AMICUS  CURIAE  INDIANA  FAMIL Y  INSTITUTE 
Zechariah D. Yoder 
Adler Attorneys 
Noblesville, Indiana 
ATTORNEYS   F OR   AM ICU S   CU R IA E  THE  THOMAS   M OR E SOCIETY 
Carlos Federico Lam 
Lam Law Office 
Indianapolis, Indiana 
Paul Benjamin Linton 
Northbrook, Illinois 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
Page 1 of 6 
Slaughter, J., concurring in the judgment. 
For the first time in our state’s history, the Court holds that the Indiana 
Constitution protects a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy. The 
Court’s unprecedented conclusion is both momentous and unnecessary on 
this record. The only issue before us is the propriety of the trial court’s 
preliminary injunction. That narrow issue can, and thus should, be 
resolved without reaching any of the constitutional questions upon which 
the Court opines gratuitously. 
Also without precedent is the Court’s ruling that Plaintiffs have 
standing—the right to seek judicial relief for their alleged injury. The 
problem is not that Plaintiffs lack sufficient prospective injury to 
themselves to confer standing. The problem is that the claim at issue in 
this appeal—that Senate Bill 1 violates a constitutionally protected 
abortion right under article 1, section 1—is not “their” claim. Plaintiffs do 
not allege that Senate Bill 1 violates their own rights but the rights of 
pregnant women. Until today, we have never held that standing exists 
under Indiana law to permit an aggrieved claimant to seek judicial redress 
for itself by asserting a claim belonging to someone else. In fact, we have 
held the opposite. 
Despite our differences, I ultimately agree with the Court that the 
disputed injunction must be vacated, and so I concur in its judgment. But 
unlike the Court, I would reach that result based on the lack of standing 
and not on the merits. 
A 
As the Court notes, ante, at 9, standing is derived from our state 
constitution’s separation-of-powers mandate, Ind. Const. art. 3, § 1, and is 
jurisdictional in that it limits courts to exercising only judicial power, id. 
art. 7, § 1 (assigning the “judicial power”). “The standing requirement is a 
limit on the court’s jurisdiction which restrains the judiciary to resolving 
real controversies in which the complaining party has a demonstrable 
injury.” Pence v. State, 652 N.E.2d 486, 488 (Ind. 1995) (quoting Schloss v. 
City of Indianapolis, 553 N.E.2d 1204, 1206 (Ind. 1990)). Because it is 
jurisdictional, standing is a “threshold” issue antecedent to any discussion 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
Page 2 of 6 
of a case’s merits. Horner v. Curry, 125 N.E.3d 584, 592 (Ind. 2019) 
(recognizing standing as a “threshold matter”); Pence, 652 N.E.2d at 487 
(providing that “threshold question of standing” precedes merits 
discussion).  
To ensure courts act within our proper sphere, we must raise any lack-
of-standing concerns ourselves, even if the parties do not. Last year in 
Solarize Indiana, Inc. v. Southern Indiana Gas & Electric Co., 182 N.E.3d 212 
(Ind. 2022), we dismissed one of the litigants for lack of standing, although 
no party had objected to standing below. Id. at 216. Because standing is 
jurisdictional, the importance of a claim’s merits does not give us license 
to ignore constitutional limits on our exercise of judicial power. 
To prove standing, Plaintiffs claim they face some combination of 
criminal liability and professional sanction if Senate Bill 1 is enforced 
against them. They claim their threatened injury is attributable to the 
actions of the named defendants, which consist of state medical-licensing 
officials and prosecuting attorneys in the counties where they do business. 
And they claim any harm they may face would be remedied by a 
favorable judicial decree. These allegations, they believe, entitle them to 
proceed with a state constitutional claim under article 1, section 1.  
Plaintiffs are correct that these three elements—injury, causation, 
redressability—are necessary to establish standing, but they are not 
sufficient. Implicit in all three requirements is the further requirement that 
Plaintiffs are seeking recourse for their own claim. We said as much in 
State v. Clark: 
In other words, one may attack the constitutionality of a statute 
only when and as far as it is being, or is about to be, applied to 
his disadvantage; and to raise the question he must show that 
the alleged unconstitutional feature of the statute injures him 
and so operates as to deprive him of a constitutional right, and, 
of course, it is prerequisite that he establish in himself the 
claimed right which is alleged to be infringed. 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
Page 3 of 6 
247 Ind. 490, 494, 217 N.E.2d 588, 590 (1966) (emphasis added) (quoting 16 
C.J.S. Constitutional Law § 76 (1956)). A “prerequisite” to standing, in other 
words, is that a plaintiff must show not only that she is injured but that 
the right she is asserting is her own. 
Since our decision in Clark, we have reaffirmed this “own-right” 
standing prerequisite. See Gross v. State, 506 N.E.2d 17, 21 (Ind. 1987) 
(holding that defendant lacked standing to argue the habitual-offender 
statute violated equal protection because his “rights were not affected in 
any way” by the allegedly unconstitutional statute); see also Terrel v. State, 
170 Ind. App. 422, 427, 353 N.E.2d 553, 556 (1976) (holding that defendant 
lacked standing to challenge constitutionality of the criminal statute 
because his “due process rights will not have been impaired” by the 
allegedly unconstitutional portion of the statute). Indeed, the Indiana Law 
Encyclopedia acknowledges this aspect of our state’s standing law in the 
very same section the Court cites for its contrary view: “To have standing 
to challenge the constitutionality of a statute, the appellant must establish 
that his or her rights were adversely affected by operation of both the 
statute and the particular section he or she is attacking.” 5 Indiana Law 
Encyc. Constitutional Law § 22 (2017) (emphasis added); ante, at 10. Here, 
the abortion right Plaintiffs seek to vindicate under article 1, section 1 
belongs not to themselves but to their pregnant patients. 
Despite these authorities, the Court observes we have “repeatedly 
reviewed the constitutionality of abortion laws based on abortion 
providers’ claims that the laws are unconstitutional because they violate 
their patients’ rights.” Ante, at 10. But the four cases the Court cites for this 
proposition do not establish Plaintiffs’ standing under Indiana law. Three 
of the cases relied on federal standing principles, though federal 
precedents finding third-party standing for abortion providers are no 
longer on firm ground after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 
142 S. Ct. 2228 (2022) (noting that prior abortion-provider cases “ignored 
the Court’s third-party standing doctrine”). Humphreys v. Clinic for Women, 
Inc., 796 N.E.2d 247 (Ind. 2003) (not addressing standing after trial court 
relied on federal law to find standing when provider-plaintiffs alleged 
state constitutional claims); A Woman’s Choice-E. Side Women’s Clinic v. 
Newman, 671 N.E.2d 104 (Ind. 1996) (answering certified question from 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
Page 4 of 6 
federal court on the meaning of Indiana’s abortion law in case raising 
federal constitutional challenge); Cheaney v. State, 259 Ind. 138, 140, 285 
N.E.2d 265, 266 (1972) (alleging Indiana abortion law violates Ninth 
Amendment to federal constitution). The fourth case, Clinic for Women, Inc. 
v. Brizzi, 837 N.E.2d 973 (Ind. 2005), did not address standing at all and 
rejected the plaintiffs’ merits claim that the challenged abortion law was 
unconstitutional under article 1, section 1.  
Our reliance on federal standing principles has been inconsistent and 
selective. We have embraced federal law to the extent it permits claimants 
to assert the rights of third parties. See Humphreys, 796 N.E.2d 247; A 
Woman’s Choice, 671 N.E.2d at 106–07; Cheaney, 285 N.E.2d at 266. But we 
have ignored federal law to the extent it insists “a plaintiff must 
demonstrate standing for each claim he seeks to press”, DaimlerChrysler 
Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332, 352 (2006) (citing Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 
752 (1984)). See Brizzi, 837 N.E.2d 973 (not addressing standing). As noted, 
Plaintiffs here do not assert their own claims under article 1, section 1. Yet 
the Court proceeds to reach the merits of their claim. Indiana law does not 
support Plaintiffs’ standing as to this claim. 
B 
As noted, the Court sees things differently. It finds standing here and 
proceeds to the injunction’s merits. Even assuming for argument’s sake 
that it is proper for the Court to reach the merits here, the Court says more 
than it needs to in deciding this appeal. 
As Plaintiffs acknowledge, they bring a facial challenge to Senate Bill 1. 
Yet they concede there are permissible, meaning lawful, applications of 
Senate Bill 1. That means their facial challenge to this legislation must fail, 
and the injunction banning enforcement of all its applications must be 
vacated. If the Court is going to address the merits, that is the entirety of 
what it needs to say about the trial court’s entry—and all it should say. 
The Court, instead, says much more. Its statements today recognize an 
abortion right and define its minimum contours as protecting a woman’s 
right to terminate a pregnancy to protect her life or to protect her from a 
serious health risk. Ante, at 8. This conclusion is premature both because 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
Page 5 of 6 
of this appeal’s procedural posture and because Senate Bill 1 already 
contains exceptions to its abortion ban, including exceptions for a 
pregnant woman’s life and health. We engage in judicial overreach—and 
flout our doctrine of constitutional avoidance—when we proclaim the 
existence and scope of an unenumerated constitutional right without first 
addressing whether Senate Bill 1’s exceptions protecting a pregnant 
woman’s life and health allow the procedure. Ind. Code § 16-34-2-1(a)(1), 
(3). We should refrain from taking such a giant jurisprudential leap until 
we are presented with an appeal that squarely presents these 
constitutional questions. This appeal does not. 
It has been nearly twenty years since we issued our last major abortion 
ruling in Brizzi, 837 N.E.2d 973. There, we considered the constitutionality 
of a statute requiring a woman seeking an abortion to give her informed 
consent to the procedure and, except in case of medical emergency, 
requiring a medical professional to advise her in person of certain 
information about the procedure at least eighteen hours before 
undergoing it. Id. at 976–77. On the merits, we rejected the plaintiffs’ facial 
challenge under article 1, section 1 because they failed to show the 
challenged statute was unconstitutional in all its applications. Id. at 981. 
And we held that any as-applied challenge would fail because the law did 
not impose a material burden on any constitutional right that may exist 
under article 1, section 1. Id. at 982. Thus, we affirmed the trial court’s 
dismissal of the plaintiffs’ complaint, and we specifically avoided 
deciding whether an abortion right exists under that provision. Id. at 978. 
In other words, we decided no more than was necessary to resolve the 
issue before us, and we expressly avoided constitutional questions not 
essential to our holding. 
In stark contrast, the Court today dives into the constitutional scrum, 
pronouncing its views of myriad issues not squarely before us and not 
necessary to today’s disposition. I would limit our decision today to 
Plaintiff’s lack of standing. But given the Court’s resolve to reach the 
merits of the preliminary injunction, it should, consistent with our modest 
approach in Brizzi, avoid deciding unnecessary constitutional questions. 
Thus, it should confine its ruling to Plaintiffs’ admission that Senate Bill 1 
has some lawful applications. That means the injunction, which was 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
Page 6 of 6 
premised on the trial court’s view of a likely successful facial challenge, 
must be vacated. 
*          *          * 
For these reasons, I concur in the Court’s judgment but do not join its 
opinion. 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
Page 1 of 17 
Goff, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part. 
The issue directly before this Court today is whether Indiana’s 
constitution protects a woman’s qualified right to an abortion. But the 
ramifications, I submit, are much broader than a simple dichotomy 
between “a woman’s interest in ending a pregnancy” and the State’s 
competing “interest in protecting the life that abortion would end.”1 Many 
of the liberties Hoosiers take for granted—the right to vote, to travel, to 
marry, to educate one’s children as one sees fit, or to refuse medical 
treatment—stand on federal precedents that are also now vulnerable to 
reversal. Within this “bundle of liberty rights” stands the fundamental 
“right to be let alone.”2 In my view, even those who abhor abortion in all 
circumstances should be wary of unfettered government power over the 
most personal, private aspects of a person’s life. 
When, like here, a longstanding right is stripped from the United States 
Constitution, the only remaining restraint on the Indiana General 
Assembly’s lawmaking power is our state constitution. That document 
guarantees “liberty” to all, an idea that means different things to different 
people. And when those ideas stand in tension, the state is responsible for 
protecting the minority interests against those of the majority. Otherwise, 
no one’s liberty is secure. In addressing this case, therefore, we decide 
how much power the legislature has to restrict many of the freedoms that 
Hoosiers have come to depend on. And we resolve whether our Court will 
require the legislature to balance those freedoms meaningfully against its 
legitimate policy goals.  
Here, the Plaintiffs sought an injunction after the General Assembly 
enacted—in just eleven days—Senate Bill 1, making abortion unlawful 
from the moment of conception, except in a few narrow circumstances. I 
 
1 Ante, at 2. 
2 Clinic for Women, Inc. v. Brizzi, 837 N.E.2d 973, 1001, 1002 (Ind. 2005) (Boehm, J., dissenting) 
(quoting Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)). 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
Page 2 of 17 
agree with the Court’s conclusion that the Plaintiffs have standing to seek 
injunctive relief. I also agree that Article 1, Section 1 of the Indiana 
Constitution is judicially enforceable and that it prohibits the government 
from compelling a woman to continue a pregnancy that would kill or 
endanger her. But I part ways with my colleagues’ decision to terminate 
the trial court’s injunction in its entirety. In my view, there is a reasonable 
likelihood that Article 1, Section 1’s guarantee of “liberty” includes a 
qualified right to bodily autonomy, one which the General Assembly must 
accord some weight in the legislative balance. 
More importantly, I believe that the abortion question is fundamentally 
a matter of constitutional dimension that should be decided directly by 
the sovereign people of Indiana. I would thus urge my colleagues in the 
General Assembly to put before Hoosier voters the question whether the 
term “liberty” in Article 1, Section 1 of the Indiana Constitution protects a 
qualified right to bodily autonomy. 
I. The status of a recently erased liberty right is a 
constitutional question for the people, not one 
solely for the legislative or judicial branches. 
For the last five decades, our federal constitution—as interpreted under 
one theory by a temporary majority of the United States Supreme Court—
guaranteed a qualified right to abortion in all fifty states.3 But last year, 
our federal constitution—as  interpreted under a different theory by a 
newly configured, temporary majority of the Supreme Court—lost that 
guarantee completely.4 A federal right, ingrained in our society for nearly 
half a century, evaporated overnight.  
When Dobbs was handed down, Indiana had neither state-level 
constitutional protection for the right to choose nor a trigger law to put an 
 
3 See Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973); Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 
833 (1992). 
4 See Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 142 S.Ct. 2228 (2022). 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
Page 3 of 17 
abortion ban into effect, depriving Hoosiers of any notice that a significant 
change in the law would follow if the federal barrier were ever lifted. 
Rather than hold a constitutional referendum (like some other states), our 
colleagues in the General Assembly used a special legislative session 
(called for a wholly unrelated purpose) to implement a moment-of-
conception abortion ban with only narrow exceptions. From first reading 
to the Governor’s desk, Senate Bill 1 took just eleven days to become law.5 
In fairness to our colleagues in the General Assembly, the United States 
Supreme Court left the abortion issue “to the people and their elected 
representatives.”6 The Dobbs decision, moreover, was unprecedented in 
our nation’s history; it simply could not have been predicted a generation 
ago. Still, Dobbs highlights an important principle in the preservation of 
our constitutional order: The people’s rights cannot be “only as secure” as 
the United States Supreme Court “wishes to make them.”7  
The divisive nature of the abortion debate makes the question in this 
case especially difficult. But Dobbs compels us to try, because we may yet 
have to grapple with other divisive issues once thought to have been 
settled. Granted, the Dobbs Court took pains to “emphasize that [its] 
decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right.”8 
But Justice Thomas, concurring in the Court’s opinion, called for 
reconsideration of all the Supreme Court’s due process precedents, 
including those protecting rights to contraception, private sexual activity, 
and gay marriage.9 And, as the dissent by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and 
Kagan explained, these rights are “all part of the same constitutional 
fabric, protecting autonomous decisionmaking over the most personal of 
life decisions.”10 Dobbs thus places in doubt the protection of any rights 
 
5 S. Journal, 122nd Gen. Assemb., 1st Spec. Sess. 1006, 1058 (2022). 
6 Dobbs, 142 S.Ct. at 2284. 
7 Hon. Randall T. Shepard, Second Wind for the Indiana Bill of Rights, 22 Ind. L. Rev. 575, 586 
(1989). 
8 Dobbs, 142 S.Ct. at 2277. 
9 Id. at 2301. 
10 Id. at 2319. 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
Page 4 of 17 
not expressly enumerated in the United States Constitution. Such rights, 
beyond those mentioned by Justice Thomas, could include the right to 
vote, travel, marry, live with extended family, educate one’s children as 
one sees fit, or to refuse sterilization or surgery.11 If the United States 
Supreme Court reversed itself on any of these rights, Hoosiers’ only 
source of legal protection against an overreaching state government 
would be their own constitution.  
Mindful of this broader context, we are tasked today with determining 
whether Senate Bill 1 violates the Indiana Constitution. Critical to this task 
is the recognition that neither we, nor our predecessors on the Indiana 
Supreme Court, have ever before decided whether Article 1, Section 1 
includes a qualified right to bodily autonomy. In Clinic for Women, Inc. v. 
Brizzi, three members of this Court declined to answer the question while 
one said there was a right and one said there was not.12 Our predecessors, 
naturally, had no pressing need to answer the question because the United 
States Supreme Court had already answered it for all of us. But that has 
since changed, and we’re now left to fill the constitutional vacuum that 
Dobbs created.  
Of course, any action we take to fill the void risks criticism as violating 
the separation of powers. On the other hand, prudential concerns counsel 
in favor of searching judicial review of legislation. Our constitution aims 
to prevent the concentration of authority in one branch of government. 
This Court, then, must supply a balance to the political branches and 
check any legislative overreach. We forsake that duty by simply deferring 
to the General Assembly’s decision on how to weigh the people’s liberty. 
To be sure, line-drawing on this issue is generally beyond the judicial 
purview. As we’ve emphasized before, such “classification,” is largely “a 
 
11 In fact, this Court has held that a trial court has inherent authority to order the sterilization 
of an incompetent child where “clear and convincing evidence” shows “that the medical 
procedure was in the best interest of the child.” P.S. by Harbin v. W.S., 452 N.E.2d 969, 976 
(Ind. 1983). 
12 837 N.E.2d at 978; id. at 988 (Dickson, J., concurring in result); id. at 1005 (Boehm, J., 
dissenting). 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
Page 5 of 17 
question for the legislature.”13 Yet there are “certain preserves of human 
endeavor” on “which the State must tread lightly, if at all”—“core values” 
that the legislature “may qualify but not alienate.”14 In these areas, this 
Court must ensure that statutes leave sufficient scope for Hoosiers to 
exercise their freedom. 
Ultimately, however, legislatures and courts are not the ultimate 
authority on questions of constitutional dimension. The people of Indiana 
should speak directly to the issue before us today through the 
constitutional amendment process. As the Dobbs Court itself instructed, 
the “permissibility of abortion, and the limitations, upon it, are to be 
resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens 
trying to persuade one another and then voting.”15 I would therefore urge 
my colleagues in the General Assembly to put to the people the issue of 
whether the guarantee of “liberty” in Article 1, Section 1 of the Indiana 
Constitution includes a qualified right to bodily autonomy. 
Until that opportunity comes, and taking the constitution as it stands 
today, I would find a qualified right to bodily autonomy for the reasons I 
expand on below. 
II. 
Senate Bill 1 is likely unconstitutional as applied 
because it lacks any means of balancing a 
woman’s right to liberty against the State’s 
interest in regulating abortion. 
I depart from the Court’s opinion on procedural grounds and on 
substantive grounds. Procedurally, I reject the idea that an unsuccessful 
facial challenge precludes further consideration of the Plaintiffs’ 
 
13 Chaffin v. Nicosia, 261 Ind. 698, 701, 310 N.E.2d 867, 869 (1974) (addressing a claim that 
legislation violated the equal privileges or immunities clause under Article 1, Section 23 of the 
Indiana Constitution). 
14 Price v. State, 622 N.E.2d 954, 960 (Ind. 1993). 
15 Dobbs, 142 S.Ct. at 2243 (citation and quotation marks omitted). 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
Page 6 of 17 
constitutional claim. Substantively, I take a different view of how we 
should interpret Article 1, Section 1 to resolve the issue before us.  
A. Plaintiffs’ unsuccessful facial challenge should not 
preclude consideration of the issues as applied to them. 
Our Court assesses the constitutionality of a statute either “on its face” 
or “as applied in a particular case.”16  A plaintiff bringing a facial 
challenge must show that “there are no set of circumstances under which 
the statute can be constitutionally applied.”17 Courts often view facial 
challenges with skepticism—and rightly so—because they “require courts 
to consider hypothetical scenarios involving parties not before the court 
and to decipher the full meaning of a statute without a chance for its 
meaning to be developed on a case-by-case basis.”18  
An as-applied challenge, by contrast, alleges that the statute is 
unconstitutional in the specific circumstances before the court.19 As-
applied challenges are “the basic building blocks of constitutional 
adjudication.”20 They call upon a court to exercise its limited jurisdictional 
power to “adjudge the legal rights of litigants in actual controversies.”21 
Here, Plaintiffs concede to making a facial challenge and they accept 
that the State may, subject to exceptions, enforce an abortion ban after 
some point in a woman’s pregnancy.22 For this reason, I agree with the 
Court that the Plaintiffs’ facial challenge must fail. This conclusion, 
 
16 Brizzi, 837 N.E.2d at 975. 
17 Id. at 980 (quoting Baldwin v. Reagan, 715 N.E.2d 332, 337 (Ind. 1999)). 
18 Jill Hamers, Note, Reeling in the Outlier: Gonzales v. Carhart and the End of Facial Challenges to 
Abortion Statutes, 89 B.U. L. Rev. 1069, 1070 (2009). 
19 William E. Thro, Respecting the Democratic Process: The Roberts Court and Limits on Facial 
Challenges, 9 Engage: J. Federalist Soc'y Prac. Groups 54, 54 (Oct. 2008). 
20 Richard H. Fallon, Jr., As-Applied and Facial Challenges and Third-Party Standing, 113 Harv. L. 
Rev. 1321, 1328 (2000). 
21 United States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 21 (1960). 
22 Oral Argument at 47:55–48:40. 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
Page 7 of 17 
however, should not prevent us from considering the issues as applied to 
the Plaintiffs and their circumstances. All constitutional challenges to a 
statute, whether we deem them facial or as-applied, begin with a plaintiff 
who contends that the Constitution prohibits enforcement of that statute 
against her.23 Thus, virtually “all challenges are as-applied challenges.”24 
In accord with this principle, this Court—including in Brizzi—has 
routinely addressed a party’s as-applied challenge while declining to 
address the facial challenge.25 
Here, the Plaintiffs claim that, but for Senate Bill 1, they would continue 
to provide or facilitate abortions “consistent with current law.”26 The 
providers have been performing abortions up to “13 weeks 6 days” since a 
woman’s last menstrual period.27 This activity was, until recently, 
federally protected under Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania 
v. Casey.28 And, at oral argument, counsel explained that the Plaintiffs 
object to Senate Bill 1 only to the extent it prohibits abortions that were 
previously protected.29 Thus, what’s at stake in this case is whether the 
State may “shut down” the Plaintiffs’ operations that previously enjoyed 
 
23 Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Fact and Fiction About Facial Challenges, 99 Calif. L. Rev. 915, 923 (2011). 
24 Id. (emphasis added). In a sense, an as-applied challenge is to a facial challenge what a 
lesser-included offense is to a greater offense. 
25 In Brizzi, there was “no claim” that the challenged abortion statute was “unconstitutional as 
applied to any particular plaintiff.” 837 N.E.2d at 979. But, while concluding that the 
“plaintiffs’ facial challenge must fail,” the Court “nevertheless proceed[ed] to analyze 
whether, if presented with a challenge to the statute as applied, there could be an issue for 
trial.” Id. at 981, 982. The Court ultimately “h[e]ld that there could not be because” the 
challenged statute did “not impose a material burden upon any fundamental right of privacy 
that includes protection of a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy that might exist under 
Article I, Section I.” Id. at 982. See also Price, 622 N.E.2d at 958 (passing over an overbreadth 
challenge and addressing the issue on an as-applied basis); Martin v. Richey, 711 N.E.2d 1273, 
1279 (Ind. 1999) (same). 
26 Appellant’s App. Vol. II, p. 48. 
27 Id. at 47. 
28 505 U.S. at 846. 
29 Oral Argument at 48:35–49:22. 
Indiana Supreme Court | Case No. 22S-PL-338 | June 30, 2023 
Page 8 of 17 
federal protection.30 Regardless of the “facial challenge” label, I find it 
appropriate for this Court to provide meaningful review of the parties’ 
rights under these existing circumstances. 
B. The current version of Article 1, Section 1 likely protects 
a woman’s qualified right to bodily autonomy. 
Turning to the substantive discussion of the constitutional claim before 
us, I consider the Court’s analysis flawed for two reasons. First, it fails to 
account for the absence of women in framing our 1851 constitution and 
unjustifiably diminishes the significance of the 1984 amendment to Article 
1, Section 1. Second, it relies on a simplified historical narrative of what 
the framing generations of both 1851 and 1984 thought about abortion. 
1. The 1984 amendment to Article 1, Section 1 (rather than 
the 1851 framing) should mark the starting point for our 
constitutional analysis. 
The critical question before us is whether the trial court abused its 
discretion in finding a reasonable likelihood that Article 1 Section 1’s 
guarantee of “liberty” for “all people” includes a qualified right to bodily 
autonomy. To answer that question, my colleagues attempt to discern 
how our constitutional framers in 1851 understood the text of Article 1, 
Section 1. Under that interpretive framework, the Court’s job is to uncover 
the “‘common understanding of both those who framed’” Article 1, 
Section 1 “‘and those who ratified it.’”31 The language of this 
constitutional provision must be treated with “‘particular deference, as 
though every word had been hammered into place.’”32 
 
30 Appellant’s App. Vol. II, p. 111. 
31 Ante, at 11 (quoting Paul Stieler Enterprises, Inc. v. City of Evansville, 2 N.E.3d 1269, 1272–73 
(Ind. 2014)). 
32 Id. (quoting Meredith v. Pence, 984 N.E.2d 1213, 1218 (Ind. 2013)). 
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I appreciate the importance of this interpretive approach. Our founders, 
engaged in the highest form of representative government, created “the 
fundamental agreement” between “the citizens who comprise a state.”33 
We revere their words not because they are old, but because of the 
deliberative process that made them part of our organic law. It is no easy 
task for a word or phrase to find its way into our constitution. And for 
good reason—the process elevates our constitution beyond the political 
vagaries of ordinary legislation. 
But returning to the 1851 context to discern the rights of twenty-first 
century women poses undeniable difficulties. In the nineteenth century, 
Hoosier women enjoyed no right to vote, no right to enact laws, and no 
right to decide lawsuits, let alone participate in framing our state’s organic 
law.34 Instead, the prevailing wisdom of the day largely confined women 
to the domestic sphere, to seek “the retirement of the social hearth,” while 
men gloried in “the path of statesmanship” and “years of honest labor.”35 
Women’s “natural employment” in the home, it was said, “necessarily 
limit[ed] their knowledge in matters of civil government.”36 Were a 
woman to participate “in the affairs of State,” the theory went, “she would 
then cease to be a woman.”37 Reliance on the history made by men holding 
these views, prevalent at the time of our constitutional drafting, is simply 
inadequate for charting the liberty of women today. We cannot draw 
constitutional law on the particular matter of women’s rights from the 
doings of exclusively male institutions in times when women were 
excluded and marginalized from public discussion. 
 
33 Hon. Randall T. Shepard, The Renaissance in State Constitutional Law: There Are A Few 
Dangers, But What’s The Alternative?, 61 Alb. L. Rev. 1529, 1553 (1998). 
34 See generally Virginia Dill McCarty, From Petticoat Slavery to Equality, in The History of Indiana 
Law 177–84 (David J. Bodenhamer & Hon. Randall T. Shepard eds., 2006). 
35 1 Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Convention for the Revision of the Constitution of the 
State of Indiana 503 (1850). 
36 Id. at 469. 
37 Id. at 472–73. 
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Still, while the present issue points to obvious problems with 
unbending fidelity to “originalism,” discerning our framers’ intent plays 
an important role in anchoring judicial interpretation. Our constitution, 
after all, is not an “elastic instrument” that “stretches” by judicial fiat “to 
meet the demands of the moment.”38 But today we need not stretch the 
original constitution to accommodate our modern sensibilities. The people 
themselves have updated it. In 1984, Hoosiers approved a constitutional 
amendment substituting “all people” in Article 1, Section 1 for “all men.” 
Hammering these new words into place first required majority approval 
by two consecutive iterations of our General Assembly.39 With that hurdle 
overcome, Hoosier voters then considered at the ballot box whether the 
constitution should be “amended by removing or restating certain 
antiquated language or provisions to reflect today’s conditions, practices, 
or requirements.”40 When a majority of voters answered “yes” to that 
question, the people of Indiana “respoke” into our organic law the 
protections embodied in Article 1, Section 1.41 By amending our Bill of 
Rights, the people corrected an existing democratic deficit in our 
constitution, securing the liberty of all Hoosiers, not just the men 
enfranchised in 1851. The words were changed, respoken, and hammered 
into place against a historical backdrop that was far different from the one 
that existed during the mid-nineteenth century. And it is that generation 
of 1984 whose understanding should provide the starting point for our 
interpretation. 
In 1984, every woman in the United States was guaranteed a qualified 
right to bodily autonomy by the federal constitution. It didn’t matter 
whether she resided in Orange County, California or Orange County, 
Indiana. Wherever she lived, the decision to carry a pregnancy to term 
 
38 Finney v. Johnson, 242 Ind. 465, 472–73, 179 N.E.2d 718, 721 (1962). 
39 See Ind. Const. art. 16, § 1. 
40 Pub. L. No. 218-1984, § 1, 1984 Ind. Acts 1587, 1587 (emphases added). 
41 See Kurt Lash, Re-Speaking the Bill of Rights: A New Doctrine of Incorporation, 97 Ind. L.J. 1439, 
1444 (2022) (explaining that amending an original constitution may “invest those words with 
new meaning or clarify their proper interpretation”). 
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belonged, at least during the early parts of her pregnancy, to her and her 
alone. The government had to respect, at least for a time, her ultimate 
right to control her own body. That qualified right to bodily autonomy 
was not secured easily. It was the product of a centuries-long struggle for 
gender equality. And that qualified right to bodily autonomy, as applied 
to women who enjoyed full legal citizenship, should inform our 
understanding of “liberty” as it appears in the current version of Article 1, 
Section 1. 
I make no claim that the 1984 amendment conclusively establishes that 
Hoosiers sought to enshrine the fundamental right to abortion in our 
organic law. But isn’t it likely that many of those who voted to amend 
Article 1, Section 1, to conform with “today’s conditions, practices, or 
requirements” might have contemplated that a qualified right to 
reproductive freedom was in fact the law of the land? And isn’t it likely 
that even those who opposed abortion in 1984 still recognized—albeit 
grudgingly—that Roe established a national right to choose and, thus, 
expanded our definition of liberty to incorporate that right? Such an 
inference, in my view, is equally if not more feasible than that reached by 
the Court. 
2. The history of abortion in Indiana is not as 
straightforward as the Court suggests. 
In support of its conclusion that the founding generation would not 
have considered abortion as a fundamental right, the Court invokes 
“Indiana’s long history of generally prohibiting abortion as a criminal 
act.”42 The Court also relies on the protest language used in the 1973 
amendments to Indiana’s abortion law (adopted in response to Roe) as 
evidence that Hoosiers, in amending our constitution in 1984, had no 
intention of expanding the definition of “liberty” to incorporate the right 
 
42 Ante, at 29. 
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to choose.43 But that narrative, in my view, is either flawed or paints too 
simple a picture.  
To begin with, the Court submits that, even before statehood, the 
Indiana Territorial government enacted a receiving statute adopting 
English law, “which criminalized abortion after ‘quickening.’”44 The 
Court, however, cites no English law to support this assertion. To be sure, 
the British Parliament adopted legislation in 1803 making abortion a crime 
at all stages of pregnancy.45 But Indiana’s reception statute adopted only 
the “Common Law of England, all statutes or acts of the British 
Parliament, made in aid of the Common Law, prior to” 1607 (reflecting 
the significance attributed to the English settlement at Jamestown).46 
Because the English Act of 1803 came nearly two-hundred years after the 
cut-off date for receiving English laws, Indiana did not in fact receive it as 
part of its own law. 
Second, while each of the Indiana statutes enacted during the 
nineteenth century unquestionably criminalized abortion, the historical 
record—and the text of the statutes themselves—suggest a legislative 
design “not to prevent the procuring of abortions, so much as to guard the 
health and life of the mother against the consequences of such attempts.”47 
Commercial vendors in the 1850s openly advertised their abortion drugs 
in newspapers like the Indianapolis Daily State Sentinel, promising to “bring 
on Miscarriage,” remove “all obstructions,” and restore “the monthly 
period with regularity.”48 In what was likely a response to this market of 
 
43 Id. at 38. 
44 Id. at 3–4. 
45 Lord Ellenborough’s Act, 43 Geo. 3, c. 58, § 2 (1803). 
46 Act of Sept. 17, 1807, ch. XXIV, 1807 Ind. Acts 323, 323. See Ray F. Bowman, III, English 
Common Law and Indiana Jurisprudence, 30 Ind. L. Rev. 409, 413–14 n.25 (1997). 
47 See State v. Murphy, 27 N.J.L. 112, 114 (1858). See also State v. Herring, 21 Ind. App. 157, 163–
64, 48 N.E. 598, 600 (1897) (“Miscarriage or death of the woman must result as a consequence 
of the unlawful antecedent act or acts done or perpetrated by the accused with the intent to 
procure the abortion, or no crime under the statute is committed.”) (emphasis added).  
48 Indianapolis Daily State Sentinel, Jan. 5, 1856, at 2 col. 6. 
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potentially unsafe treatments, the abortion statute in effect in 1851 
(embedded in the poisoning section of the Indiana criminal code), 
prohibited the willful administration of “any medicine, drug, substance,” 
or other thing to a pregnant woman with the intent to “procure [a] 
miscarriage,” unless to preserve her life.49 Had abortion been as safe then 
as it is today, we simply do not know what the framers of 1851 would 
have done.  
Moreover, caselaw from other jurisdictions indicates that, at the time of 
the Indiana Constitution’s drafting, our framers recognized quickening—
rather than conception—as the beginning of pregnancy.50 Contemporary 
legal treatises, to which our framers certainly had access, likewise 
characterized a child in the womb as “not possessing an individual 
existence” and thus unable to be “the subject of murder.”51 To be sure, in 
Cheaney v. State (a pre-Roe case finding no fundamental right to abortion 
under the federal constitution), this Court concluded that, unlike some 
other states, Indiana “followed” precedent recognizing the common-law 
“rights of an unborn child without regard to the state of gestation.”52 But 
the cases on which the Cheaney Court relied in fact support the contrary 
conclusion. In Biggs v. McCarty, for example, this Court held that, because 
the “testator died after the quickening of the second child, and at a time 
when it was legally capable of taking the estate jointly,” the property 
 
49 Act of Feb. 7, 1835, ch. XLVII, 1835 Ind. Acts 66, 66. 
50 See Smith v. State, 33 Me. 48, 48 (1851) (“To procure an abortion, as to a female, pregnant but 
not quick with child, was not, at the common law, an offence, if done with her consent.”); 
Abrams v. Foshee, 3 Iowa 274, 279 (1856) (concluding that to “cause or procure an abortion, 
before the child is quick, is not a criminal offence at common law, whatever it may be after the 
child is quick”). 
51 Henry Roscoe, et al., A Digest of the Law of Evidence in Criminal Cases 694 (3d ed. 1846). 
See Ind. Supreme Court, A Catalogue of Law Books Contained in the Supreme Court Library 
89 (1872) (listing Roscoe’s treatise). 
52 259 Ind. 138, 142–43, 285 N.E.2d 265, 267 (1972) (emphasis added). 
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vested in the daughter as well as “the child with which she was then 
pregnant as tenants in common.”53 
Finally, the 1973 amendments to Indiana’s abortion law, adopted in 
response to Roe v. Wade, should not, in my view, be taken to suggest that 
most Hoosiers—by their representatives in the General Assembly—
opposed a woman’s qualified right to terminate a pregnancy. In passing 
that bill, the legislature simply declined to acknowledge “a constitutional 
right to abortion on demand or to indicate that it approves of abortion, 
except to save the life of the mother.”54 Even one of the legislators who 
introduced that measure recognized the practical need to legalize abortion 
to avoid “contributing to the extinction of more lives” than without the 
law.55 What’s more, the historical record reveals a shifting set of views on 
the issue among our legislators, not a fixed opposition to abortion over 
time. Just six years prior to the 1973 amendment, both houses of the 
General Assembly voted to approve a Republican-authored bill to legalize 
abortion in the state—a measure that failed to become law only because 
the Democratic governor vetoed it.56 And a 1995 amendment to Indiana’s 
abortion law, adopted in response to Casey, contained no protest language 
akin to that in the 1973 measure.57 
 
53 86 Ind. 352, 363 (1882) (emphases added). In King v. Rea, the other case on which Cheaney 
relied, this Court held that a child who “was in ventre sa mere [in the mother’s womb] when 
the deed was made,” was “a person in being, and therefore could take.” 56 Ind. 1, 15 (1877). 
But in reaching this conclusion, the Court pointed out that the child was born four months 
after the deed was executed. Id. (noting that the “date of the deed is in April, 1855” and the 
child “was born in August, 1855”). In other words, when the deed was executed, the unborn 
child had quickened, and “therefore could take.” Id.  
54 Pub. L. No. 322-1973, § 1, 1973 Ind. Acts 1740, 1740–41. 
55 Justin Walsh, The Centennial History of the Indiana General Assembly, 1816–1978, at 624 
(1987) (quoting Sen. Gubbins); S. Journal, 98th Gen. Assemb., 1st Reg. Sess. 39 (1973). 
56 Walsh, Centennial History at 584. 
57 See Pub. L. No. 187-1995, 1995 Ind. Acts 3327, 3327–29. 
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In short, the history of abortion in Indiana—its practice and regulation 
by the state—is much more complex and nuanced than the Court’s 
characterization allows. 
C. There is likely a qualified right to bodily autonomy 
under Article 1, Section 1. 
In weighing the issue before us, it’s worth emphasizing what this Court 
recognized over thirty years ago—that “those who wrote [our] 
constitution believed that liberty included the opportunity to manage 
one’s own life except in those areas yielded up to the body politic.”58 
While our decision in Lawrance upheld a patient’s right of self-
determination to intelligently accept or reject life-sustaining medical 
treatment, the choice to carry a pregnancy to term involves just as 
important a private decision for a person “to determine what shall be 
done with [her] own body.”59 Indeed, pregnancy involves such deeply 
personal consequences for a woman’s body, health, family, and course of 
life that the right to choose may well comprise an inalienable, core liberty 
value.60 If liberty means being “let alone” to “manage one’s own life,” then 
some scope for reproductive choice seems essential.61 It cannot be that, 
“upon becoming pregnant, women relinquish virtually all rights of 
personal sovereignty in favor of the Legislature's determination of what is 
in the common good.”62 
To be sure, Senate Bill 1 itself recognizes a woman’s liberty interest, if 
only in part, by allowing time-limited exceptions for victims of rape and 
 
58 Matter of Lawrance, 579 N.E.2d 32, 39 (Ind. 1991). 
59 See id. (quoting Schloendorff v. Soc’y of New York Hosp., 105 N.E. 92, 93 (N.Y. 1914)). 
60 See Price, 622 N.E.2d at 960 (observing that “there is within each provision of our Bill of 
Rights a cluster of essential values which the legislature may qualify but not alienate”). 
61 Brizzi, 837 N.E.2d at 1002 (Boehm, J., dissenting) (quoting Matter of Lawrance, 579 N.E.2d at 
39). 
62 See Hodes & Nauser, MDs, P.A. v. Schmidt, 440 P.3d 461, 486 (Kan. 2019) (finding a state-
constitutional right to abortion). 
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incest and pregnancies involving a lethal fetal anomaly.63 But by holding 
that the legislature retains the discretion “to prohibit abortions which are 
unnecessary to protect a woman’s life or health,”64 the Court puts these 
exceptions at risk, effectively inviting the legislature to repeal even the 
most basic protections to a woman’s liberty. 
Beyond severe health emergencies and the exceptions mentioned, 
Senate Bill 1 fails to account for the myriad ways in which denial of 
abortion access restricts a woman’s liberty. It permits the government’s 
invasion of bodily autonomy from the moment of conception and offers 
no freedom of choice whatsoever in circumstances beyond the statutory 
exceptions. It seems to me that reproductive liberty is too personal and too 
important for the General Assembly to set at naught when weighed in the 
balance against the protection of fetal life. Because Senate Bill 1 fails to 
recognize a liberty right to reproductive choice or provide any means to 
balance bodily autonomy against the state’s legitimate interest in 
regulating abortion, there is, in my view, a reasonable likelihood that it is 
unconstitutional, at least as applied to plaintiffs who, according to the 
limited record before us, have long provided abortion services safely and 
are now prohibited from performing even those services that remain legal  
under Senate Bill 1. 
The trial court here recognized this, and our abuse-of-discretion 
standard of review compels deference to its decision from this Court.65 
Arguably, a trial court abuses its discretion if it misinterprets the 
constitution.66 And the “meaning of our [c]onstitution” is generally “a 
question of law” that “we review de novo.”67 But the trial court needed 
 
63 Ind. Code §§ 16-34-2-1(a)(1)(A)(ii), (a)(2) (2022). 
64 Ante, at 41. 
65 See Indiana Family & Soc. Servs. Admin. v. Walgreen Co., 769 N.E.2d 158, 161 (Ind. 2002) 
(reiterating that the “grant or denial of a preliminary injunction rests within the sound 
discretion of the trial court, and our review is limited to whether there was a clear abuse of 
that discretion”). 
66 See Hayworth v. Schilli Leasing, Inc., 669 N.E.2d 165, 167 (Ind. 1996). 
67 State v. Neff, 117 N.E.3d 1263, 1267 (Ind. 2019). 
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only to find a reasonable probability that the Plaintiffs would ultimately 
prevail. When the “state constitutional issues have never been addressed 
by this Court,”68 and when the “underlying constitutional question is 
close,” I find it especially appropriate to “uphold the injunction and 
remand for trial on the merits.”69 The trial court entered only a temporary 
injunction, based on a limited, preliminary exchange of briefs and 
affidavits. The complex constitutional issue here deserves full-scale 
argumentation on an application for a permanent injunction before a 
definitive ruling can be made.70 
I also find no abuse of discretion by the trial court on the remaining 
preliminary injunction factors. Enforcement of Senate Bill 1 would 
irreparably harm pregnant women who seek to exercise the choice not to 
carry a pregnancy to term. As to the balance of the equities and the public 
interest, I cannot find an abuse of discretion in the trial court maintaining 
the fifty-year status quo that was mandated by the United States Supreme 
Court in an effort to balance a woman’s liberty against society’s interest in 
fetal life.71 I would therefore affirm the trial court’s temporary injunction  
to the extent it enjoins enforcement of Senate Bill 1 against Plaintiffs’ 
previously protected abortion activities. I would further remand these 
proceedings to the trial court for full development of the parties’ evidence 
and arguments on the constitutionality of the statute, or any parts of it, as 
applied to the Plaintiffs. In the meantime, of course, our colleagues in the 
General Assembly would be free to consider amending the legislation to 
account for a woman’s qualified right to bodily autonomy or to begin the 
process of a constitutional referendum. 
 
68 Doe v. O’Connor, 781 N.E.2d 672, 674 (Ind. 2003). 
69 See Ashcroft v. ACLU, 542 U.S. 656, 664–65 (2004). 
70 For example, the affidavits provided to the trial court by both parties contain little 
discussion of the impact of the right to abortion on a woman’s course of life and, thus, how 
central that right may or may not be to liberty. 
71 See Roe, 410 U.S. at 162–63 (holding that a state’s interest in protecting fetal life becomes 
“compelling” and supports a ban on abortion at the point of viability); Casey, 505 U.S. at 861 
(describing Roe’s viability rule as marking “the point at which the balance of interests tips”).