Indiana mom calls on leaders to change abortion records policy

By KYLA RUSSELL
WISH-TV | wishtv.com

A Hamilton County mom is emotionally calling on state leaders to rethink recent moves to make abortion records public after her unborn baby was given a fatal diagnosis.

In September, Amber Martin shakily moved her hand to reveal something many families pray for – two red lines on a positive pregnancy test. The mom of three boys was elated. She and her partner, Michael Dowd, had experienced a miscarriage earlier that year.

Their baby, lovingly named Arlo, would be Dowd’s first child.

“I fell apart, because this is not a decision that any of us wanted to make, it’s not something that anybody wants to have happen to them,” Martin told I-Team 8. “It’s crazy, because the day that we found out we were pregnant, we were actually scheduled to go to a fertility clinic that day. So, I called and I was like, ‘I have a positive pregnancy test.’”

But, that hope soon turned to hardship.

“We came in here in this office for trivial things like just having the ultrasound that would have been a normal 20-week ultrasound,” Martin said. “It’s not trivial.”

She and Dowd soon received a crushing diagnosis.

At 20 weeks, Arlo had no brain activity and would not survive in utero, birth, or in life.

Martin was given very few choices. Doctors told her she could wait to deliver the baby naturally, knowing he would suffocate during labor or almost immediately after. She could also choose to have an early induced delivery, the technical definition of abortion, according to the World Health Organization.

If she waited too long to decide, Indiana law would require her to go out of state for help.

“I knew that I wasn’t going to be coming home with this little boy,” Martin said.

Doctors told her she needed to get to medical providers that could help right away.

With her own life at risk, along with baby Arlo’s, she made the hard choice to terminate the pregnancy.

Martin was immediately inundated with over a dozen pages of paperwork asking for extensive information, including her address, medical history, occupation, race, and religion. All information collected was to be included in a Terminated Pregnancy Report or a TPR.

In January, Gov. Mike Braun signed an executive order calling for the Indiana Department of Health to follow Attorney General Todd Rokita’s requests for TPRs to be public record.

It comes amid a long battle between IDOH and an anti-abortion group seeking access to TPRs. A recent settlement required IDOH to release the records, but a Marion County Superior Court judge granted two providers a temporary restraining order. This means reports will not be released until the case has been litigated.

“The gist of it is that you’re being questioned,” Martin said. “Then you’re being warned that if you’re picking this and you’re picking these procedures that at some point in time, they can come back to you, and you can be charged with a felony or potentially murdering your child.”

Martin’s operation was deemed medically necessary. The doctors told her Arlo would not feel anything from the procedure. She says having it gave her the chance to honor her son’s short life.

Rokita says the reports aren’t medical records and making them public simply allows him to ensure providers are following state law.

“These pregnancy reports were always for public health research and data,” Liane Hulka, Co-Founder and Board Chair at Our Choice Coalition said. “They were never meant to be what our Attorney General, Todd Rokita, says … to be turned over to the public citizen to police abortion providers.”

Our Choice Coalition is a bipartisan Political Action Committee that seeks to elect leaders aimed at supporting reproductive rights, including abortion.

Hulka says there used to be thousands of reports made every year, before abortion was banned in the state. In the third quarter of 2023, only about 40 abortions were allowed in the state.

“These are private medical records of patients,” Hulka said. “If you’re turning them over now, it’s just for witch-hunt purposes.”

Martin believes the information on the TPR would be enough to find her. Despite the risk, she’s not afraid to say that having an abortion saved her life and meant Arlo would not suffer.

“I remember just coming back from the procedure and wanting to be able to hold him, and not being able to,” Martin said.

Martin plans to begin advocating for better education on abortion and what might lead a woman to that choice.

Gov. Braun did not respond to I-Team 8’s Kyla Russell’s request for comment.

This story was originally published by WISH-TV at wishtv.com/news/politics/indiana-mom-calls-on-leaders-to-change-abortion-records-policy.