Indiana University is asking a federal court to invalidate an Indiana state law that criminalizes research conducted with the tissue of aborted fetuses.
The law was signed by then-Gov. Mike Pence in 2016 during the last few months of his administration, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The regulation makes it a felony offense to "intentionally acquire, receive, sell, or transfer aborted fetal tissue."
Indiana University, the state's flagship research university, filed the suit almost immediately after Pence signed the bill. A federal judge is expected to rule on the issue by year-end.
Fetal tissue research bans, and legal challenges to them, are not new. Similar clashes have occurred in states including Texas, California, and Wisconsin. What is new, is that the complainants in the Indiana case are research scientists. Their core argument against the state—that the ban violates the U.S. Constitution—is also new. The university claims the ban is an unconstitutional restraint on interstate commerce, the regulation of which is under the federal government's purview.
The lawsuit also alleges that the law violates a First Amendment right to academic freedom, and an equal protection right under the Fourteenth Amendment not to be discriminated against for conducting research with fetal tissue.
It is, however, the interstate commerce argument that has received the most attention. The university conducts research with fetal remains that are received from out of state. Namely, the university receives fetus brains from the Birth Defects Research Laboratory at the University of Washington.
Indiana's law threatens the "significant research progress related to Alzheimer's and other diseases," and the university's "important role and reputation in the global research community," according to the lawsuit.
Attorneys representing Indiana, however, insist the argument does not hold up because federal law prohibits profiting from the sale of fetal tissue.
This is not the first time Indiana's abortion law has been to court. Last year, the state was blocked from enforcing portions of the law that required the burial or cremation of fetal remains, and a portion that banned abortions based on a risk of Down Syndrome or other disability.
In this case, lawyers for the state maintain the central issue is not abortion, but the research practice in question.
"This case isn't about abortion. It is a case about Indiana prohibiting a very controversial research practice," said John Bursch, an outside lawyer for the state.
If the university's argument were to pass muster in federal court, it would have implications for other states that actively ban fetal-tissue research, including South Dakota and Louisiana.