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CV NEWS FEED // The Indiana Department of Health (IDOH) settled a lawsuit Feb. 3 that a pro-life organization filed last year over the department’s refusal to fulfill public records requests pertaining to abortions.
CatholicVote previously reported that Voices for Life filed suit in May 2024 after the IDOH repeatedly withheld terminated pregnancy reports (TPRs) that detailed extensive information about abortions performed in the state. Until the IDOH’s withholding of the TPRs, Voices for Life had routinely requested and reviewed them and had submitted complaints of 701 apparent illegal incidents discovered by reading the reports.
According to South Bend ABC affiliate ABC57, TPRs can contain information like the abortion facility, details about the abortionist, the age of the aborted baby, the reason for abortion, and more. The names of the women obtaining abortions are redacted for privacy; however, pro-abortion organizations and a superior court judge said that Indiana’s pro-life laws significantly reduced the number of abortions in the state and therefore made it easier to potentially identify patients even with the redactions. As of August 2023, Indiana legislation only allows abortions in extremely few circumstances.
IDOH only settled the lawsuit once Republican Gov. Mike Braun took office in January and signed a slew of executive orders, one of them requiring Indiana’s pro-life laws to be “fully and faithfully executed.” According to ABC57, the order “seemingly led” to IDOH’s decision to settle the lawsuit.
Nonprofit law firm Thomas More Society represented Voices for Life.
“Because of the executive order, the state then approached us and said, ‘Hey, we’d like to settle this since it’s going to be resolved in your favor by reason of executive order,’” Thomas Olp, vice president of Thomas More Society, said, according to ABC57.
Melanie Garcia Lyon, Voices for Life’s executive director, celebrated the legal victory.
“We’re a relatively small nonprofit that was started two and a half years ago, and we sued the government and essentially won,” Lyon said. “We see this as a win for our organization and for unborn children and women in Indiana.”
Lyon added that Voices for Life has already made a public records request for TPRs and has been told that the request is being processed.
“So, we’ll have a lot of backlog of information to look through, but our enforcement team is ready,” she added.
According to ABC57, “All parties have signed the settlement agreement, but the appeal from Voices for Life still needs to be dismissed for the agreement to be official.”
