Indiana’s long-simmering battle over reproductive health care has returned to the spotlight, as Attorney General Todd Rokita’s office moves to vacate a 12-year-old injunction that has protected Planned Parenthood’s role as a Medicaid provider. The legal maneuver, filed on August 15, 2025, could have sweeping consequences for thousands of low-income Hoosiers who rely on Planned Parenthood for essential health services far beyond abortion.
The dispute centers on House Enrolled Act 1210, a law passed in 2011 that bars state agencies from contracting with or giving grants to any organization that performs abortions or operates abortion facilities. Notably, the law carves out exceptions for hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers, but its main target has always been organizations like Planned Parenthood. As soon as then-Governor Mitch Daniels signed the measure into law, Planned Parenthood’s Indiana chapter, with the support of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, challenged it in federal court.
In 2013, the plaintiffs scored a major victory: Judge Tanya Walton Pratt issued a permanent injunction, ruling that using the law to deny Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood was "unlawful" because it would deny patients "a free choice of medical provider." This injunction has stood for more than a decade, ensuring that Medicaid patients in Indiana could continue to use their coverage for a wide range of services at Planned Parenthood clinics.
But the legal landscape shifted dramatically in July 2025, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Medicaid patients do not have the right to sue to see their doctor of choice. This decision, which allowed South Carolina to exclude clinics providing abortions from its Medicaid program, has emboldened Indiana officials. In a brief filed last month, Rokita’s office argued, “That injunction’s legal foundation has entirely eroded.” The state maintains that it is "no longer equitable to continue enforcing an injunction that interferes with a law enacted by the people’s representatives to further a vital state interest in protecting prenatal life when that injunction’s legal foundation has entirely eroded."
Planned Parenthood’s Great Northwest, Hawai’i, Alaska, Indiana, and Kentucky chapter has responded with alarm, warning that health care access is at risk for the thousands of Medicaid patients who depend on their clinics. As CEO Rebecca Gibron put it in a statement to the Capital Chronicle, “Indiana’s extreme abortion restrictions have created a dangerous environment for patients and providers. Now, targeted attacks against Planned Parenthood threaten to rip away basic health care from thousands of people who already have nowhere else to turn.”
The organization’s clinics provide much more than abortion services. They offer birth control, cancer screenings, HIV testing and prevention, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, vaccinations, and wellness exams. “Other safety-net providers cannot absorb all of the patients that Planned Parenthood sees,” Gibron added. “When you target us, you target the critical health care that keeps communities healthy.”
It’s not just rhetoric. Since the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion in 2022, Indiana lawmakers moved swiftly to outlaw most abortions, with only narrow exceptions, and eliminated state licensure of abortion clinics. As a result, Planned Parenthood has not provided abortions in Indiana since 2022. The few legal abortion procedures that do occur are now performed in hospitals or hospital-owned outpatient centers. According to Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Nicole Erwin, “The provider landscape has changed dramatically — there are fewer health care options, longer wait times, and an even more fragile safety net.”
Despite no longer offering abortion services in Indiana, Planned Parenthood continues to serve thousands of Medicaid patients each year. Erwin emphasized, “If for some reason the State moves to exclude us, despite us no longer being an abortion provider in Indiana, patients would not be able to use their Medicaid coverage with us. Cutting us off would mean the loss of millions in revenue that directly fund this care, but more importantly, it would mean patients lose trusted providers and timely access to services that protect their health and lives.”
The state, however, sees things differently. Rokita’s office asserts that the Supreme Court’s recent decision “fundamentally changes the legal landscape” and renders the Southern District’s earlier ruling “no longer good law.” The brief argues, “Continued enforcement of the injunction does not merely interfere with federal-state arrangements. It also undermines a vital state policy in promoting ‘respect for and preservation of prenatal life at all stages of development.’ One of Indiana’s most important public policies is to promote childbirth over abortion.”
As the legal wrangling continues, the plaintiffs have pushed back, filing a response on July 17, 2025. They argue that if the permanent injunction is vacated, the case should be reopened to address unresolved claims, including one based on the Constitution’s Contract Clause. “Rather than simply asking that the final judgment entered in the plaintiffs’ favor be vacated, the State has requested that judgment be entered in its favor,” the plaintiffs wrote. “Under the circumstances of this case, that request is highly improper.”
The plaintiffs point out that only three of four legal claims were addressed in the original judgment, leaving the Contract Clause issue undecided. “This was certainly appropriate, for the resolution of the Medicaid Act claim in the plaintiffs’ favor rendered it unnecessary to resolve the Contract Clause claim,” they explained. “But, if the relief premised on the Medicaid Act claim is vacated, the plaintiffs must be afforded an opportunity to assert their remaining claim for relief. Given the passage of time, they believe it may be appropriate to assert additional challenges to the defunding statute as well.”
Rokita’s office, for its part, has dismissed these arguments as meritless. In a July 23, 2025 reply, the state argued that Planned Parenthood only challenged the law’s application to contracts and grants executed before the law took effect in 2011, and that any such agreements are now long expired. “And it’s been so long that the claim was basically ‘abandon(ed),’” the office noted. Moreover, the state contends that when negotiating the final judgment, “the parties made clear that it would resolve all claims” except for attorney’s fees. If Planned Parenthood wants to reopen the case, the state insists, “it cannot do so by bootstrapping its request onto the State’s motion … Procedurally, a request for affirmative relief must be made by motion, not dropped into an opposition brief.”
The stakes in this legal fight extend well beyond the courtroom. At its heart is a question of access: Will Indiana Medicaid patients continue to have the option to seek care at Planned Parenthood clinics, or will the state’s policies further restrict their choices? With the legal and political landscape in flux, thousands of Hoosiers—and the providers who serve them—are watching anxiously to see what comes next.