All seven Indiana abortion clinics misplaced their licenses Thursday below the state’s new regulation, which permits abortions to solely be carried out in hospitals or outpatient surgical facilities owned by hospitals. Greater than 98% of the state’s abortions have been accomplished by these clinics in 2021.
Abortion clinics within the state advised The Related Press they are going to stay open to refer sufferers out of state, together with to neighboring Ohio.
“I assumed that right this moment can be the worst day,” Dr. Katie McHugh, a supplier on the Indianapolis abortion clinic Ladies’s Med, advised the AP on Thursday. “However I feel the worst day was yesterday, realizing that the sufferers that we noticed within the workplace yesterday have been the final ones that we might see, and realizing how a lot it meant for all of us that have been there — the workers, the physicians and the sufferers — that we have been capable of present that care to the final second.”
Dr. Alison Case — who since 2020 supplied treatment abortions on the South Bend abortion clinic Complete Lady’s Well being — will proceed her work as a household apply physician in Indianapolis.
She stated she worries for the labor and supply sufferers she oversees at a hospital within the metropolis.
“I feel there’s going to be extra folks pressured to hold their pregnancies to time period, so I feel we’ll see extra deliveries,” she stated. “However I feel, essential to notice, we’re additionally going to see extra of those issues.”
In Ohio, clinics have been getting ready for a excessive quantity of sufferers coming in from surrounding states following the decide’s ruling — although they notice it could possibly be short-lived.
“Effectively, I by no means anticipated to be a surge state,” stated Iris Harvey, president and CEO of Deliberate Parenthood of Larger Ohio, utilizing the brand new lingo of the sector. “For 14 days, we is perhaps.”
Ohio clinics that had been prohibited from performing most abortions will resume these providers starting Friday.