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About nine years ago, Sarah Knowlton sought an abortion at a now-closed clinic in northern Indiana, where she encountered anti-abortion protestors as she approached the entrance.
Knowlton reflected on how that experience drove her in 2019 to Whole Woman’s Health, another abortion clinic in South Bend, to train workers to take patients safely to its doors, creating a resource she wished she had years ago.
But the program — and Knowlton’s work at the clinic — will end Sept. 15, when Indiana’s abortion ban comes into force, effectively closing down abortion clinics statewide.
Indiana’s Legislature became the first in the nation to approve abortion restrictions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb signed the ban into law Aug. 5.
The ban, which has exceptions, prohibits abortion clinics from providing any abortion care, leaving such services solely to hospitals or outpatient surgical centers owned by hospitals.
“My last shift as a clinic escort is coming up,” Knowlton said Wednesday. “And I’m not ready for it.”
At Indiana University Health, which is the state’s largest hospital system, providers have been training to continue offering abortion care in the allowed circumstances.
Under the new law, abortions will be permitted only in cases of rape and incest before 10-weeks post-fertilization; to protect the life and physical health of the patient; or if a fetus is diagnosed with a lethal anomaly.
A doctor who performs an illegal abortion or who fails to file required reports must lose their medical license.
IU Health officials outlined a new 24/7 response team — which will include a clinician, an ethicist and a lawyer — that providers can contact to evaluate nuanced emergency situations.
