10-yr-old child abuse victim who was 6-weeks pregnant made to travel from Ohio to Indiana for abortion
OHIO: A six-week pregnant 10-year-old who was the victim of child abuse was forced to travel from the state of Ohio to Indiana because she was ineligible for an abortion in her home state. On Monday, June 27, three days after the Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking decision to overturn Roe v Wade, Dr Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, took a call from a colleague, a child abuse doctor in Ohio.
The doctor for the child abuse victim helped the young girl and her family get the abortion access they needed in Indiana, The Columbus Dispatch reported. For now, Indiana lawmakers have not banned abortion but they are ready to further restrict or ban abortion in mere weeks. The Indiana General Assembly will convene in a special session on July 25 when it will discuss restrictions on abortion policy along with inflation relief. But for now, the procedure still is legal in Indiana. And so the girl soon was on her way to Indiana for Bernard's care.
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After Supreme Court issued the decision, abortion providers in Indiana witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of patients coming to their clinics for abortion from the neighboring states where abortion laws are restricted or banned. The Women’s Med, an Indiana abortion clinic with a center in Ohio, received patients in need of surgery from their Ohio clinic. Dr Katie McHugh, an independent obstetrician-gynecologist saw “an insane amount of requests” from pregnant people in Kentucky and Ohio, where it is far more difficult to get an abortion, the news outlet reported.
McHugh said the higher number of patients were coming from Kentucky because of more restrictive laws. “We are doing the best we can to increase availability and access as long as we can, knowing that this will be a temporary time frame that we can offer that assistance,” McHugh said.
“It’s hard to imagine that in just a few short weeks we will have no ability to provide that care,” Bernard told the outlet. On Wednesday, June 29, abortion clinics in Ohio filed suit, saying that the state’s new ban was unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, men are rushing to get vasectomies, The Washington Post reports. Dr Doug Stein, a Floria urologist said numbers have surged since Roe v Wade was overturned. "It was very noticeable Friday, and then the number that came in over the weekend was huge and the number that is still coming in far exceeds what we have experienced in the past," Stein told the publication. "Many of the guys are saying that they have been thinking about a vasectomy for a while, and the Roe v Wade decision was just that final factor that tipped them over the edge and made them submit the online registration," he said.