Planned Parenthood has spent decades fighting laws that keep parents in the room when their daughter is pregnant.
On August 18, a federal appeals court handed the abortion giant a brand-new way around Indiana moms and dads.
The judge who wrote the ruling turned the First Amendment itself against those parents.
7th Circuit Strikes Down Indiana Abortion Law Protecting Minors
In 2017, Indiana lawmakers passed a simple protection for pregnant teenage girls.
The law made it illegal to help a minor get around Indiana's parental consent rules unless a judge had approved a bypass.
Planned Parenthood sued right away, and court blocks kept the law from ever being enforced.
Nine years later, a three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the law violates the First Amendment as applied to Planned Parenthood.
The opinion came from Judge David Hamilton, an Obama appointee who, as LifeNews reported, has struck down multiple pro-life laws.
"The aid-or-assist law is not viewpoint-neutral," Hamilton wrote.
His reasoning is a masterpiece of legal gymnastics.
Because the law blocked speech that helped a girl get an abortion behind her parents' backs, but allowed speech urging her to keep her baby, Hamilton called it unfair to the abortion side.
Put plainly, a federal judge decided that steering a 15-year-old around her own mother is protected free speech.
Planned Parenthood Free to Refer Indiana Teens for Abortion Without Parental Consent
Since Dobbs in 2022, Indiana has protected unborn children with a ban on most abortions.
So the abortion industry's path for a pregnant Indiana teen runs across state lines.
Next door, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a repeal of his state's parental notification law in December 2021, and it took effect in June 2022.
Under the panel's ruling, Planned Parenthood staff can hand a pregnant Indiana girl the name of an out-of-state abortion clinic, and her parents never have to hear a word about it.
Think about what that means at the kitchen table.
In most schools, a nurse can't hand that girl an aspirin without a signed permission form.
Her mom and dad may never learn about the abortion referral until something goes wrong.
Pro-life advocates warn it leaves frightened girls to face a serious medical procedure far from home, without Mom or Dad.
Joyce Farley of Pennsylvania knows exactly how that story ends.
In the mid-1990s, an adult man gave her 12-year-old daughter alcohol and raped her.
Then the man's mother, a total stranger to the family, secretly took the girl out of state for an abortion and paid for it.
Farley's daughter was left with severe pain and bleeding from an incomplete abortion and needed more medical care.
"The abortion had been arranged to destroy evidence," Farley told Congress in 1998.
Even Judge Michael Scudder, a Trump appointee, pushed back on the majority's reasoning.
He agreed the law could not stand in this case but warned the majority "undervalues Indiana's compelling interest in keeping parents involved in every stage of a minor's decision."
That interest isn't new, either.
The Supreme Court upheld parental consent laws with a judicial bypass in Planned Parenthood v. Casey back in 1992, and Indiana's consent law follows that model.
Idaho Proved States Can Stop Abortion Trafficking of Minors
Indiana isn't the first state to face this fight, and Idaho shows how it can be won.
In December 2024, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals let Idaho enforce its ban on harboring or transporting a minor for an abortion to hide it from her parents.
The court flagged the law's "recruiting" language as too broad, but the core protection survived.
"Trafficking a minor child for an abortion without parental consent puts both in grave danger," Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said.
He's right, and the data backs him up.
A Heritage Foundation study by scholar Michael New found parental involvement laws cut the abortion rate among minors by roughly 16 percent.
Those aren't statistics.
They're teenage girls who talked to their parents and babies who got to be born.
Indiana Asks Full 7th Circuit to Restore Parental Rights on Abortion
Planned Parenthood loves to call itself a health care provider, yet it fought for nine years for the right to keep mothers and fathers in the dark during the most dangerous decision their daughters will ever face.
Indiana has asked the full 7th Circuit to rehear the case, and if that court won't fix it, Attorney General Todd Rokita should take this fight straight to the Supreme Court.
Sources:
- Steven Ertelt, "Appeals Court Lets Planned Parenthood Take Teens Out of State for Secret Abortions," LifeNews, October 23, 2026.
- Steven Ertelt, "Appeals Court Rules Against Indiana Law Protecting Teens From Abortions," LifeNews, August 19, 2026.
- Office of the Idaho Attorney General, "Attorney General Labrador Successfully Defends Idaho's Abortion Trafficking Laws at Ninth Circuit," December 2, 2024.
- Sarah Terzo, "Mother of underage rape victim gives testimony for law protecting minors," Live Action News, June 21, 2014.
- Jonah McKeown, "Bishop Paprocki: Illinois Repeal of Parental Notice Abortion Law 'A Dark and Disgraceful Moment'," National Catholic Register, December 18, 2021.
- Michael J. New, "Analyzing the Effect of State Legislation on the Incidence of Abortion Among Minors," The Heritage Foundation, February 5, 2007.
