Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the court on Friday.
(WTIU)
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overruledRoe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, returning the authority to regulate abortion to the people and their elected representatives.
Jessica Marchbank, state programs manager at All-Options Pregnancy Resource Center, said that even though she anticipated the decision coming, she wasn’t really prepared for how she would feel.
She said she spent the morning alternating between sadness and anger, also knowing there were people who needed the center’s help.
“And so I spent about an hour giving into the emotions and then I went to work, and I've been funding people's abortions all morning,” Marchbank said.
She said people in Indiana needed to know that abortion was still legal and would remain so until further notice. After July 6, she said, the landscape would likely change.
“But it's to be determined to what extent there will be restrictions on abortion access or to what extent it might be criminalized,” Marchbank said.
Shruti Rana, Monroe County NOW and All-Options Pregnancy Center board member, said the decision would have a big impact in Indiana, Bloomington and the university.
The Indiana legislature, she said, has been indicating that it would move to ban or strictly regulate abortion.
“So far, there's been indications this morning from Governor Holcomb and others that the Indiana legislature intends to meet in a special session on July 6, where they'll consider this issue. And we can expect some kind of ban to come out of that,” Rana said.
The decision, she said, was terrifying and incredibly broad.
“I think the actual opinion is actually slightly worse because we have some quite strong concurrences from Justice Thomas that seek to go even further than the decision itself,” Rana said.
Rana said this decision also placed some other fundamental rights at risk.
“And so the rights to contraception -- same-sex marriage, privacy in the bedroom, bodily autonomy, women's rights, LGBTQ rights -- all of those are at stake based on this opinion today,” Rana said.
Sophie Suter, president of the College Democrats at IU, said the decision was a major disappointment but expected.
“We knew it was coming, but it still doesn't hurt any less,” Suter said.
She said the college Democrats had been preparing for this ever since a draft of the opinion was leaked in May.
“We put together a list of resources and just ways that people can help like contacting representatives, organizing in your community, things like that,” Suter said.
Going forward, Suter said work is mainly going to be fighting in communities and organizing.
“We're gonna have to try and figure it out from here, because we've never seen something like this before,” Suter said. “We've never been in a place where our rights have literally been taken away from us.”
A ‘Keep Abortion Legal’ rally is planned for Saturday at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis.
