On the last day of July in 2023, Planned Parenthood performed its final abortion in the state of Indiana. It was the day before the state would begin enforcing a near-total abortion ban, with very narrow exceptions, after a year of legal battles that followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to end the constitutional right to abortion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case. Before the Dobbs decision, which effectively allowed every state to set its own abortion laws, four Planned Parenthood clinics in Indiana provided abortion services once a week. Today, abortions are no longer an option.
Deborah Nucatola, the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Great Northwest Hawai‘i, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, told Salon the abortion ban was especially devastating. Indiana had briefly served as a haven for out-of-state patients, such as those from Kentucky, whose access to abortion services was immediately restricted after Dobbs. Indiana became a “surge state,” serving many patients who were traveling from elsewhere, even while providers knew they would eventually had to cease their services.
