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  • 2018-03-28 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb Sign a Law Mandating Women Disclose Abortions or Face Jail Time? (en)
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  • In March 2018, a number of memes appeared on social media to express the notion that the state of Indiana had just passed a law requiring that every time a woman seeks medical or psychological treatment she MUST be quizzed about past abortions, with the failure to disclose such information being punishable by jail time and fines: The most common interpretation attached to such memes was that women would face jail time for their failure to disclose previous abortions in health care settings. However, the actual news underlying this claim reported that health care providers (not patients) would be subject to potential legal sanctions under the law if they did not attempt to elicit and report information about previous abortion complications from their patients: Senate Enrolled Act 340 was authored by Indiana State Senator Travis Holdman in January 2018; it was signed into law by Gov. Eric Holcomb on 25 March 2018. That bill amended existing law to require that health care providers report to the state department each case in which [they] treated a patient suffering from an abortion complication, and to require that reports of abortion complications (including psychological or emotional complications, depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, and sleeping disorders) contain information such as the age and race of the patient, the type of abortion procedure used, and where that procedure was performed. The bill says that each failure to report an abortion complication as required is a misdemeanor. In other words, the law posits legal penalties (including jail time and fines) for health care providers who fail to report information about patients with abortion complications, not for patients who fail to disclose such information to their doctors. Critics of the bill maintained that it was an attempt to discourage abortions by making the procedure appear dangerous and required the gathering of inappropriate information about patients: (en)
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