St. Joseph County, located in north central Indiana is home to South Bend, the fourth largest city in Indiana, as well as the University of Notre Dame. This county currently contains one abortion provider to serve the over 266,000 residents who live in St. Joseph County. The areas to the south are rural and many come to South Bend for goods and services, presumably including abortion.
If the St. Joseph County Council gets their way, even the meager one abortion provider in the county may close. Coming before the council is a proposal sponsored by Daniel Herbster, (R) District F, that would require abortion providers to have hospital admitting privileges. When asked if he felt the proposal would effectively ban abortion, the councilman had this to say:
“I don’t believe so, I looked at across the country, you’ll see that there are abortion providers that obtained admitting privileges.”
Apparently, Councilman Herbster neglected to look at Texas, which has shuttered more than a dozen abortion providers since their similar law passed. Even closer to home, this same type of ordinance in Allen County, Indiana caused an abortion provider in Fort Wayne to close their doors.
Of course, the justification for this proposal in St. Joseph County is one of patient safety, ignoring the fact that the state of Indiana implemented new rules just five months ago and already requires an abortion provider to have an agreement with a local medical professional who has hospital admitting privileges.
The lone councilwoman in St. Joseph County, Diana Hess, (D) District E was more direct:
“As the only woman on council, I guess I would applaud them for caring about women’s health issues but I just question if this is the appropriate way to do it,”
“I guess it's not something we're used to seeing at the county level, since there are already state, there are already state laws in place about some of these things so. I never thought that was an issue I’d be dealing with at the county level.”
At this time, only one TV station, the NBC affiliate, and zero newspapers are covering this story. This is the way the extremists chip away at our rights, and the people in St. Joseph County need to stand up and fight back against this proposed rule. This is nothing more than a blatant attempt to block access to abortion for a large population area in Indiana. If successful here, they will move onto larger areas in Indiana, like Indianapolis.
The earliest the proposal will come up for a public hearing is December and I urge St. Joseph County residents to attend the Common Council meeting. Meetings appear to occur the second Tuesday of each month at 6:00PM at the County City building in downtown South Bend.