(LifeSiteNews) — Reported abortions remain rare in Indiana following tighter enforcement of state reporting requirements, according to the latest quarterly report published by the Indiana Department of Health’s Division of Vital Records.
The Division’s latest Terminated Pregnancy Report covers July 1 to September 30, 2025, the latest period for which data is available. It shows that 42 abortions occurred in the third quarter of 2025, compared to 41 in the same quarter the year before. The number represents a 98 percent drop in abortions from before full enforcement of the state’s pro-life laws, which ban most abortions throughout pregnancy with exceptions for rape, incest, or “medical emergencies” in the first 10 weeks or fetal anomalies “incompatible with sustained life” up to 20 weeks. The law also requires medical care for any babies who survive attempted abortions.
Abortion is never medically necessary, and neither illness or the circumstances of conception can justify the killing of an innocent child in his mother’s womb.
More than half of the period’s abortions occurred between 14 and 20 weeks and were sought by women aged 25-34, according to the report. All fell within the law’s stated exceptions, and more than 64 percent of them were for so-called “lethal fetal anomaly.”
Of particular note, the report lists one “termination” in which “the fetus was born alive,” although it does not offer elaboration. Earlier this month, an appellate court blocked the Department of Health from releasing reports about individual abortions, even with the seekers’ names redacted, deeming them confidential medical records.
While the number of abortions is statistically unchanged, the fact that the same result was found again adds confidence to the rarity of legal abortions under the state’s laws, as this report is the first to follow Indiana’s tightening of compliance with abortion reporting requirements in July.
Two major hospital systems, IU Health and Eskenazi, had refused to submit abortion reports, citing a since-vacated federal privacy rule from the Biden administration. Starting this summer, the Department of Health put medical facilities on notice that it will seek financial penalties against them for noncompliance.
However, the report also highlights the preborn lives that continue to be sacrificed under the law’s exceptions and does not reveal how many illegal abortions go unreported thanks to the use of abortion pills mailed into the state, which cannot be identified coming in and can be taken in private. The untraceable nature of such abortions makes state-level bans on using abortion pills effectively unenforceable unless and until enforcement of the federal Comstock Act, which forbids distributing abortion-inducing drugs by mail, is restored.
Twelve states currently ban all or most abortions. But the abortion lobby continues to work feverishly to preserve abortion “access” via deregulated interstate distribution of abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors, and embedding abortion “rights” in state constitutions.
