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INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana allows so few abortions that health officials stopped releasing individual reports to protect patients’ privacy, a move some Republicans are now fighting to reverse.
Republicans, including prominent candidates in this year’s elections, want access to reports detailing every abortion still performed in the state. Abortion rights advocates and some state officials warn that would jeopardize the privacy of doctors and patients who can only undergo abortions under strict circumstances.
The State prohibits abortions except within limited periods in cases of rape, incest, lethal fetal anomaly and serious risks to the patient’s health. Like many states, Indiana has long collected data on abortions, but last year the Department of Health decided to keep individual reports out of the public record and only release its regular summary data four times a year to make it harder to potentially identify the patients.
Indiana law requires doctors to submit “terminated pregnancy reports” with demographic and medical history information to the health department. The reports do not name patients, but may include their ZIP code and county of residence, and are rarely published in the states that collect them, experts say.
In the days after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, an individual record obtained by the Indianapolis Star through a public records request confirmed an abortion performed on a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was a rape victim.
The issue has gradually become a political football as Indiana’s competitive gubernatorial primary approaches in early May.
In January, Republican gubernatorial candidate and former Attorney General Curtis Hill asked the health department and Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb to allow the release of individual reports. Republican Lieutenant Governor and gubernatorial candidate Suzanne Crouch pledged in a March post to X to make the reports public if she is elected.
And on Thursday, Attorney General Todd Rokita, who is running for re-election, issued an advisory opinion arguing that the reports should be in the public domain. The opinion does not change any practices, but was in response to an investigation by state Sen. Andy Zay, a congressional candidate, Rokita’s office said.
Voters should ask gubernatorial candidates to take a stand, Rokita said during a news conference Thursday.
After Rokita published his opinion, the health department said the reports are not public record and pointed to an informal opinion written by an open records official appointed in December.
Rokita argued that the reports are not medical records and could show whether an abortion was performed legally. Without the reports, she said, “there is no effective way” to enforce the state’s near-total ban.
The Legislature should act next year if the department doesn’t, Zay said Thursday.
“We can use them as tools to hold those on the periphery of abortion clinics and abortion doctors accountable,” Zay said of the reports.
Individual reports ask patients for information including zip code, age, race, ethnicity, education level, marital status, previous pregnancies, date of last period, and father’s age, based on the most recent quarterly summary. Patients can refuse to answer questions, the department said.
Doctors report information about the type of procedure, the reason for the abortion, and an estimate of the length of the pregnancy. Individual reports also include the doctor’s name, facility name, and date of abortion.
Indiana’s ban went into effect in August. From October to December, 46 reports of terminated pregnancies were filed with the health department, compared to 1,724 in the same period in 2022.
It’s not common for states to release individual reports on abortion, said Rachel Jones, senior research scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, a science-based research group that supports abortion rights.
Jones said seeking individual reports is an effort to intimidate. health care providers and patients.
“There is no public health or even legal purpose for trying to impose this,” Jones said.
Rokita denied that the small number of reports makes it easier to identify patients and said the health department may redact certain information before making the reports public.
The attorney general has waged multiple legal battles centered on abortion. He gave a televised interview criticizing an Indianapolis OB-GYN who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old Ohio girl. The Indiana Supreme Court ruled last year that some of Rokita’s statements violated rules of professional conduct for attorneys.
Rokita is weaponizing the reports, said Rebecca Gibron, executive director of the Planned Parenthood region that includes Indiana.
“Denying abortion as health care is an abuse of power, intended to stigmatize vital services for political gain at the expense of Hoosier access to essential health care, even now when it is only accessible in the rarest of circumstances,” Gibron said in a statement. .
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