Travels to Indiana for Procedure
On Monday three days after the Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, took a call from a colleague, a child abuse doctor in Ohio.
Hours after the Supreme Court action, the Buckeye state had outlawed any abortion after six weeks. Now this doctor had a 10-year-old patient in the office who was six weeks and three days pregnant.
- Unfortunately at this point, there is no more information that I could find about the pregnant girl. I found no information on who knocked her up, or if there is an investigation. At any rate, the procedure is still legal in Indiana.
Indiana lawmakers are poised to further restrict or ban abortion in mere weeks. The Indiana General Assembly will convene in a special session July 25 when it will discuss restrictions to abortion policy along with inflation relief.
Since Friday, the abortion clinics where Dr. Katie McHugh, an independent obstetrician-gynecologists works have seen “an insane amount of requests” from pregnant people in Kentucky and Ohio, where it is far more difficult to get an abortion.
A ban on abortions after six weeks took effect on last week in Ohio. Last Friday the two abortion providers in Kentucky shut their doors after that state’s trigger law banning abortions went into effect.
For now, Indiana abortion providers have been fielding more calls from neighboring states. Typically about five to eight patients a day might hail from out of state, said McHugh, who works at multiple clinics in central and southern Indiana. Now, the clinics are seeing about 20 such patients a day.
A similar dynamic is at play at Women’s Med, a medical center that performs abortions in Indianapolis that has a sister center in Dayton, Ohio. In the past week, they have doubled the number of patients they treat for a complete procedure, accepting many referrals from their Ohio counterpart.
More than 100 patients in Dayton had to be scheduled at the Indianapolis facility, a representative for Women’s Med, wrote in an email to IndyStar.
Women and pregnant people are “crying, distraught, desperate, thankful and appreciative,” the representative wrote.
