Senate bill would require abortion clinics to report complications to state

An Indiana Senate committee Wednesday approved a bill that would impose additional requirements on abortion clinics, requiring all such facilities, along with any health care provider, to report any complication arising from an abortion to the state department of health.

Senate Bill 340 also would require women undergoing medication abortions to sign a form saying that they have been told of the manufacturers’ instructions regarding the use of that drug.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 6-1 to send the bill to the full Senate for consideration.

“It’s actually a pretty simple bill,” said Sen. Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne, one of the bill’s co-authors. “What we’re doing is just adopting rules basically to make sure that as the health care industry has progressed, we stay up with it.”

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Regulating abortion clinics is left to the state, making it necessary for the legislature to keep reviewing the laws that govern the industry, said Sue Swayze, vice president of public policy for Indiana Right to Life, who testified in favor of the bill.

One relatively recent change, she said, has been the increasing use of abortion pills in ending pregnancies. In Indiana, 26 percent of abortions today are non-surgical and these drugs have higher complication rates than surgical procedures, she said.

But abortion rights advocates testified that the bill would do little to protect women and only get in the way of a woman’s ability to have a legal abortion.

Almost three-quarters of women who seek an abortion do so because they cannot afford to have a child, said Lynne Bunch, vice president of patient services for Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky.

“This legislation is not about enhancing patient safety nor does it do anything to address the driving force behind the abortion issue, which is unintended pregnancy,” she said. “Please do not set up a system whereby the avenue to safe and legal abortion is presented with even more hurdles and potentially eliminated.”

A Fort Wayne obstetrician-gynecologist who heads the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists said the measure would help women make better decisions about whether to end their pregnancies by providing them with additional information.

Dr. Christina Francis said surgical facilities track complication rates stemming from their procedures and abortion facilities should be no different,

“The only way that truly informed consent is possible if we know accurate complication rates of the procedures and medications that we’re recommending,” she said. “In order to allow women to make a truly informed choice, we must have accurate information to give them.”

However, Sen. Tim Lanane, D-Anderson, the committee’s lone vote against the measure, questioned whether this bill would treat abortion providers differently than it does other health care providers, such as dentists.

Noting that the fiscal analysis of the bill’s costs mentioned about $300,000 in legal fees the state has spent in recent years to unsuccessfully defend similar bills in court, Lanane asked why abortion seems to arise as an issue every session.

“This is nothing but big brother state government … done solely to try to chill the rights of women,” he said.

Call IndyStar reporter Shari Rudavsky at (317) 444-6354. Follow her on Twitter and on Facebook.