Troubled Indiana clinic had holes in abortion records

INDIANAPOLIS – An Indianapolis Planned Parenthood clinic caught in controversy after an undercover video exposed broken rules on reporting sexual abuse also received a state reprimand for sloppy abortion record-keeping.

Indiana Health Commissioner Judith Monroe threatened to go to prosecutors if the clinic kept filing official terminated pregnancy reports without such required information as the types of procedures and the medications used.

A copy of the Aug. 27, 2008, reprimand obtained Thursday by The Associated Press said a state audit of the clinic’s records submitted in 2007 found 278 were incomplete.

“Future Terminated Pregnancy Reports that lack required information will be referred to the Marion County Prosecutor,” Monroe said in a letter to Dr. Michael King, who performs abortions at the Indianapolis clinic, one of three in the state where Planned Parenthood provides abortions.

A Planned Parenthood of Indiana spokeswoman said it has resubmitted the records, but a State Department of Health spokeswoman said some cases remain unresolved.

Indiana Right to Life, which disclosed the reprimand in a news release, said the Indianapolis clinic in some cases did not reveal either the procedure used or the length of gestation for the aborted fetus.

“It raises concerns, when you see both of those factors omitted on the same report,” said Mike Fichter, president and CEO of the anti-abortion group.

Indiana law restricts abortions after the first trimester to fetuses that are not viable, unless the mother’s health is endangered, and requires such later-term abortions to be performed in hospital settings.

Fichter said some of the Indianapolis clinic’s reports also did not disclose the age of the mother, as required by law. He provided a copy of one report that said the mother had only an eighth-grade education, raising questions about her age. Indiana law requires women younger than 18 to get consent from a parent or a judge before they can have an abortion.

Fichter said his group is reviewing reports for all four of the abortion clinics in Marion County, and it has plans to do so for five other clinics across the state.

“We found hundreds of incomplete terminated pregnancy reports for all of the abortion clinics in Marion County,” Fichter said.