Wilkinson in her home in Indianapolis.
(WTIU News, Bente Bouthier)
A near-total abortion ban went into effect September 15. It passed early last month, making Indiana the first state to pass new legislation on abortion after Roe v. Wade was struck down this summer.
Some of Indiana’s first abortion legislation on the book is from the 1800s – setting punishment for performing abortion at a year in county jail and a $500 fine.
In the Indiana archives, Governor Otis Bowen’s folder contains 44 letters received between 1973 and 1975, asking him to support Right to Life Amendments. The folder contained no letters trying to dissuade him from supporting anti-abortion rights action.
In following years, he received other letters asking him to pass legislation restricting abortion access, such as letters from 1977 on abortion paid through Medicaid. Bowen was also a trained medical doctor.
After Roe v. Wade, most legislative sessions saw some legislation introduced to address abortion access, though that doesn't mean it made it to a committee hearing.
Abortion rights have been a subject of politics and policy for decades.
But Jude Wilkinson, an Indianapolis resident, said she experienced first-hand how restrictive abortion laws can affect your health.
A student at Purdue in 1969, she found out she was pregnant from a doctor she’d gone to asking for birth control. She had tried to get birth control from a doctor on campus previously but was denied because she wasn’t married.
“I knew I couldn't raise this baby. And I knew there was a way, I wanted to find a way,” she said.
She’d thought about trying to go to New York but didn’t know anyone there.
Wilkinson learned of another student from Indianapolis who was also pregnant and knew the name of an abortionist there.
They went to a three-story white house, which Wilkinson said was near the old Winona Memorial Hospital, south of 38th street.
“When we walked into the house, there were several women and they had folding chairs, card table chairs, around what was the living room, what would have been the living room, and we sat and waited, and he called us up one at a time.”
She remembers an exam table with stirrups upstairs. She didn’t get any anesthetic when her uterus was scraped.
“The pain was excruciating. And I had a literal out of body experience where I was watching from the ceiling at myself,” Wilkinson said. “I closed my eyes, and I was watching myself from the ceiling, just waiting for it to be over.”
Wilkinson holds a picture she had taken while in college. (Bente Bouthier)
She said she and the student she came with were told to leave and come back. They went and got lunch, and then had to have the procedure done again.
Wilkinson started to hemorrhage when she got back to campus. She went to a doctor who she’d previously gone to asking for birth control and told him she’d miscarried.
The doctor didn’t believe her and asked for the name of her abortionist.
“He said, ‘If you tell me the name of the doctor, I will know whether it was a reputable procedure,’” she said.
“And so, I told him, and he said, ‘Yep, this guy is known for not killing people.’”
Wilkinson said the doctor gave her antibiotics and told her to rest.
Indiana has only one recorded death from a botched abortion, in 1988.
But Dr. Phillip Eskew, who practiced as an OB/GYN for nearly 40 years, thinks many more people in Indiana have died while trying to end a pregnancy.
He testified last month at the statehouse before legislators passed SB 1.
According to Eskew, deaths connected to an abortion wouldn’t necessarily be recorded as such, but as the illnesses women technically died from afterwards.
Eskew has delivered thousands of pregnancies, but still remembers the 19 months he spent at St. Elizabeth’s, a home for unwed mothers, back 1971 as part of his OB training rotation.
Eskew worked as an OB/GYN fr 38 years. He had his own practice in Carmel, Ind. and also worked at St. Vincent. (Bente Bouthier)
"We had one girl that came in that had been treated with some type of an instrument and was bleeding,” he said, remembering a patient from his residency training. “And she was severely infected and later died from pelvic inflammatory disease.”
At St. Elizabeth’s he delivered two 11-year-old girls, one of them four days after Christmas.
“She delivered a baby, and we took her to the recovery room, and she asked for a doll that she got for Christmas instead of the baby. I had a daughter at the time that was nine. And it had an impact on me.”
Eskew told state lawmakers that a ban would not stop abortions from happening.
“That's what I'm so concerned about, as so many other doctors that testified,” he said. “It's just unfortunate that people, mostly men in the legislature, are making decisions affecting women. And I think that, to me, is the worst part of the whole thing.”
A lot has happened for Wilkinson since 1969. She’s given birth to and raised two children. She got a law degree.
Now, she works remotely. She likes art and loves her cat.
She’s also a cancer patient and joined protests against the abortion ban at the statehouse, despite the risks it posed to her health.
“I don't think it's fair 50 years...50 years. We had a right and now it's gone.”
She says she’s tired of women having to fight.
“I don't want anybody else to have to go through what I went through and what other women went through in the 60s,” she said. “And like I said, 50 years, people don't remember how bad it was.”
