INDIANAPOLIS, IN — Can a religious freedom law be used to create a right to abortion? That’s the question heading to the Indiana Supreme Court this fall. Urging the justices to answer with a firm no, Thomas More Society attorneys have filed an amicus curiae, or ‘friend-of-the-court,’ brief on behalf of Voices for Life, a South Bend-based pro-life organization.

A Marion County judge ruled earlier this year that abortion qualifies as an “exercise of religion” under Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and on that basis, permanently blocked enforcement of Indiana’s pro-life law against anyone who claims a religious motivation for abortion. The amicus brief argues that this ruling rests on a fundamentally flawed premise. Abortion has never been an “exercise of religion” under Indiana law. Indiana criminalized abortion in 1836—fifteen years before the framers of the state’s constitution wrote the religious liberty protections that RFRA is built on. The legal and philosophical tradition that gave rise to those protections has never treated abortion as religious exercise, and the courts below never seriously grappled with that history.

“This case is a Trojan Horse. The ACLU and its clients want to call this religious liberty, but it isn’t—not under any historically honest understanding of the term,” said Thomas Olp, Executive Vice President at Thomas More Society. “From Cicero to John Locke to the framers of Indiana’s Constitution, the natural law tradition that gave us religious freedom has never treated the taking of innocent life as an exercise of religion. The ACLU is using a law designed to protect people of faith to smuggle in an unrestricted right to abortion. If this theory prevails, it won’t just gut Indiana’s pro-life protections, it will distort the meaning and purpose of religious liberty itself.”

“Voices for Life proudly stands with the Attorney General and the State of Indiana in defense of Indiana’s pro-life laws,” added Melanie Lyon, Executive Director of Voices for Life. “Religious liberty should never be twisted into a legal weapon to justify violence against unborn children and their mothers.”

The brief, filed by Benjamin D. Horvath, Special Counsel for Thomas More Society and Voices for Life Vice President, traces the meaning of “exercise of religion” through the Western natural law tradition that directly shaped Indiana’s Bill of Rights. Within that tradition, abortion was universally condemned as contrary to natural law and not recognized as a form of religious exercise. The brief also argues that this historical meaning was fixed when Indiana’s Constitution was adopted in 1851 and that RFRA, which borrows its operative language from those constitutional provisions, inherits that meaning. Even if the Court were to reach the question of competing rights, the brief contends, Indiana’s constitutional right to life under Article I, Section 1—rooted in the same natural law tradition—would independently foreclose the ACLU’s claim.

The amicus brief also argues that the lower courts ignored Indiana’s own legislative declarations—including a state law requiring that every woman seeking an abortion be informed that human life begins at fertilization, and the legislature’s express invocation of a “compelling state interest” in protecting unborn life.

The case began in September 2022, when the ACLU of Indiana sued on behalf of anonymous plaintiffs and a group called Hoosier Jews for Choice, arguing that Indiana’s pro-life protections violated their religious beliefs under RFRA. After years of litigation in which lower courts repeatedly sided with the plaintiffs, a Marion County judge on March 5, 2026, made the injunction permanent. Attorney General Todd Rokita immediately appealed, and the Indiana Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. Oral argument is set for September 10, 2026.

Read the amicus curiae brief filed in the Indiana Supreme Court by Thomas More Society attorneys on behalf of Voices for Life, in Individual Members of the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana v. Anonymous Plaintiff 1, here.