This past Friday, a federal judge halted an Indiana law that would have sanctioned doctors who performed second-trimester abortions. The law was scheduled to go into effect on July 1st and would have made the aforementioned act a felony. Judge Sarah Evans Baker was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan and has served since. She granted the preliminary injunction temporarily and prevented the law from being enacted. The decision came just hours after the US supreme court refused to hear a case which defended a similar law in Alabama. The judge's move played an important role in the ongoing fight against restrictive abortion bans.
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To note, a slew of anti-abortion law has swept the nation lately. The most recent being Missouri getting their last abortion clinic's license renewal declined, which jeopardized the status of anti-abortion clinics in the state. Luckily, the clinic continued to provide abortion services as a court injunction remained in effect. Nevertheless, the latter occurred shortly after the introduction of Alabama's highly restrictive abortion-ban which was signed into law. Bill HB 314 would hit doctors with up to 99 years in jail for performing abortions. Alabama followed in the footsteps of Georgia, which advocated for the passing of a "fetal heartbeat" bill to halt mothers from undergoing an abortion if a health professional can spot a fetal heartbeat
