An anti-abortion organization is set to gain access to detailed state records of every abortion performed in Indiana following a policy change implemented by Republican Gov. Mike Braun.
South Bend-based Voices for Life announced Tuesday it's ending a lawsuit against the Indiana Department of Health after reaching a settlement with Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita that will allow the organization to obtain minimally redacted copies of each Terminated Pregnancy Report (TPR) submitted to the state health agency.
"We are grateful to the Indiana attorney general's office for recognizing that individual Termination of Pregnancy Reports are public records that must be released. TPRs are essential to ensuring Indiana’s abortion laws are properly enforced," said Thomas Olp, executive vice president of the Thomas More Society, which represented Voices for Life in court.
"By reviewing the state's abortion records, Voices for Life tirelessly protects the safety and well-being of Indiana women and children. This settlement agreement will allow Voices for Life to continue effectively performing its important public service as a watchdog over the state's abortion industry."
Indiana's near-total abortion ban, Senate Enrolled Act 1 (2022), mandates hospitals collect and report to the state more than 30 categories of data on each abortion, including demographic information on the patient, characteristics of the pregnancy, the legal justification for the abortion and details about the doctor who performed the abortion.
TPRs do not contain an abortion patient's name. But the administration of Republican former Gov. Eric Holcomb, as well as Indiana's public access counselor, concluded such voluminous data on the now-tiny number of Indiana abortions could be reverse-engineered to identify specific women who obtained an abortion, especially in smaller communities.
As a result, they said TPRs must be excluded from public release under the Indiana Access to Public Records Act the same as any other "patient medical records."
Rokita last year invited a legal challenge to that policy, despite his statutory obligation to represent the Department of Health, and Voices for Life promptly filed a lawsuit seeking access to TPRs.
An Indianapolis judge dismissed that case in September after determining current state law clearly exempts TPRs from release under the state's Access to Public Records Act, and the state health agency is under no obligation to provide the reports to Voices for Life, notwithstanding Rokita's contrary opinion.
However, Indiana's new governor issued an executive order shortly after taking office last month directing the Indiana Department of Health to reconsider its TPR release policy — clearing the way for the settlement allowing Voices for Life to access TPRs.
"The public release of these reports is a victory for vulnerable women and children in Indiana. Access to these reports will help ensure abortionists are held accountable for violating health and safety regulations," said Melanie Garcia Lyon, Voices for Life executive director.
According to court records, Voices for Life's motion to dismiss the litigation has not yet been granted by the Indiana Court of Appeals.
The attorney for two physicians permitted to intervene in the case at the trial court level said Dr. Caitlin Bernard and Dr. Caroline Rouse are not part of the settlement agreement and hinted that legal wrangling may be ahead.
"We are deeply troubled by the Indiana attorney general's backroom deal with an anti-abortion vigilante organization," said Stephanie Toti, executive director of The Lawyering Project.
"The personal health information of abortion patients should remain private, and disclosing it to vigilantes puts the safety of both patients and doctors in jeopardy. We will continue to explore legal options on behalf of our clients to safeguard their patients' personal information."
In any case, Senate Bill 240, currently awaiting action by the Indiana Senate Committee on Health and Provider Services, would explicitly exclude TPRs from the medical records exception in the Access to Public Records Act — definitively ending any basis for the litigation if it's enacted into law.
Indiana statutes prohibit all abortions from the moment of conception, except within 10 weeks gestation for pregnancies caused by rape or incest, or 20 weeks if necessary to prevent serious physical impairment or the death of a pregnant woman, or because of a lethal fetal anomaly.
According to the Indiana Department of Health, a total of 159 abortions were performed at hospitals between Oct. 1, 2023, and Sept. 30, 2024 — the first one-year period with the state's Republican-enacted abortion restrictions fully in effect.
That's less than 2% of the 9,529 abortions women obtained in the state during the calendar year 2022 when the rights formerly guaranteed by Roe v. Wade still were recognized in Indiana.
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