For Indiana woman, ‘worst-case scenario’ led her to Illinois for abortion care

In the spring of 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the longstanding abortion protections established under Roe v. Wade, leaving decisions about the reproductive health care procedure up to the states. For Hoosier Abbey Hall, she never imagined such a change would impact her.

“When Roe v. Wade got overturned, I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God. Those poor women.’ Not ever thinking that I would be in that situation,” Hall, 33, said, recalling a conversation with her husband, Billy. “… when you’re married and you have kids of your own, you don’t think about needing to utilize that form of health care.”

She got a tattoo of a woman defiantly raising her fist that same month. She started donating to Planned Parenthood regularly.

Two years later, she was one of those poor women.

Indiana has a near-total abortion ban with limited exceptions for life of the mother, rape and incest, and fatal fetal anomalies. Indiana was the first state to pass such a ban through its legislature shortly after the federal law fell, though it was delayed by court proceedings for nearly a year before going into effect. Since then, abortions have plummeted across the state.

Hall shared her story with the Indiana Capital Chronicle, detailing her journey from conception to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Illinois, where she ultimately terminated her pregnancy after learning her fetus had a birth defect that would impair its quality of life.

Obtaining an abortion — a word she intentionally uses — and sharing her story help Hall bring meaning to the death of her daughter. But the stigma attached to the reproductive health care procedure and additional hoops imposed by Indiana’s lawmakers added another layer of trauma to an already difficult decision, Hall said.

“The more you sit in it, as it’s happening, you realize, ‘Oh. This is trauma. This is another form of trauma that I’m having to endure on top of an already traumatic experience,’” Hall said. “You just realized this is super messed up.”

A neural tube defect

Hall and her husband, already parents of two young boys, decided to add another member to their Carmel-based family at the end of 2023. Hall said she’d struggled with postpartum depression and anxiety but, after years of therapy, she finally felt she was in a place to try again.

“I was always so anxious during my pregnancies, so I never felt like I enjoyed the newborn stage,” Hall recalled. “I had done so much work in therapy; I was feeling really good. I felt like I kind of had my thumb on it for the first time in my life and I was like, ‘What would it be like for me to experience a pregnancy with less anxiety?’”

Hall’s husband wanted to keep the sex a surprise, but Hall learned that they would be having a girl.

Preliminary testing was positive, but her medical provider was still proactive when it came to testing.

“I remember feeling like this is the healthiest I’ve been in a pregnancy,” Hall said.

Even the projected birth date of Aug. 19 felt “serendipitous,” Hall said. Both parents and their oldest son had March birthdays, leaving the youngest son as the only outlier. Now, the newest addition to the family would have a birthday in the same month as him.

But right before the 16-week mark, a test came back with an abnormal result. The neural tube defect screening and alpha-fetoprotein test, a dual analysis known as NTD/AFP for short, checks for birth defects like spina bifida and anencephaly.

Since the test can produce false positive results, Hall had to go to the maternal-fetal medicine unit at Ascension St. Vincent the next week for an ultrasound. It was during these agonizing days that Hall first started to feel the kicks.

“Every time I felt movement, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s got to be a good sign, right?’” Hall said.

Hall recalled the anxiety her husband felt — he was “just a nervous wreck” — and he was unable to look at the screen with the ultrasound technician.

“I’m well into the second trimester, and so that’s always an exciting one. Because it finally looks like a baby,” Hall said. “They start the ultrasound and I see a head. I see a nose. I see a chin. I see arms and fingers and legs and toes and a back and ribs.

“To me, it looks like a normal baby.”

But after the young technician whisked away the images to share with a doctor, she came back with a much older, experienced technician.

“… and my husband just kind of hangs his head a little bit lower. And I think that’s when we both knew …” Hall said.

Getting better images of the fetus’ spine required some physical manipulation that left Hall bruised and sore the next day, but it showed what they feared: a hole in the spine and a lemon-shaped head, indicators of a more severe form of neural tube defect.

A doctor consulted with the family afterward, saying a specialist in Cincinnati could potentially operate, but the couple learned that their growing fetus would never have the same quality of life as their boys.

They made the decision to terminate the pregnancy, getting a referral to yet another hospital system — this time at IU Health, as the Catholic health system didn’t offer the procedure.

Choosing Illinois

Throughout her story, Hall had nothing but praise for every health care professional she met along the way — whether it was the doctor at St. Vincent’s who didn’t judge her for her decision or her OBGYN who ordered the test.

But the coordinating nurse at the IU Health office gave an additional personal touch that Hall needed, even sharing her personal cell to navigate the myriad of daunting systems.

That nurse explained that IU Health would need to order its own ultrasound for legal purposes, not health reasons, along with documentation indicating that the doctors believed the abortion qualified for one of Indiana’s rare exceptions, according to Hall.

IU Health didn’t confirm or deny the above requirements before deadline.

The call to arrange care at IU Health came during a brunch to celebrate Hall’s 33rd birthday, just one day after the ultrasound at St. Vincent’s and only a few days before her oldest son’s sixth birthday party. Still feeling battered both emotionally and physically from the experience the day before, Hall asked for other options.

That meant traveling to Illinois, where abortion access is protected by law.

“In the course of a breakfast, I went from thinking that we were staying in the state — and it’s going to be pretty seamless and easy … and by the end of breakfast we were having to go to Illinois. That’s how quickly it came to a head,” Hall said.

She recalled the frustration with having to jump through additional hoops to obtain the care in her home state, saying there were “a lot of white men in my uterus right now” making decisions instead.

“This isn’t a form of birth control. No one is getting monthly abortions. First of all, it’s a lot of (administrative work) and it’s expensive,” Hall said. “I hate that narrative that’s being pushed. That women are these heartless, impulsive and less-than-human beings who are using abortions as a form of birth control.”

“No woman wants to spend their day at a clinic undergoing a medical procedure. That’s just — it’s a laughable argument.”

The next few days were a flurry of phone calls as Hall weighed the pros and cons of different clinics in Illinois.

Champaign, Ill., — just a few hours away — had a Planned Parenthood clinic that could perform the procedure in one day, but it didn’t offer anesthesia. A Chicago clinic had anesthesia but would require a two-day procedure and didn’t allow visitors, not even her husband.

A Planned Parenthood spokesperson didn’t confirm whether or not the Champaign location had anesthesia, saying it varies from clinic to clinic.

Prior to Hall’s first pregnancy, she experienced a miscarriage at six weeks. During that procedure, a dilation and curettage or D&C for short, she was unconscious. The idea of being awake for the more intensive dilation and evacuation, or D&E, to terminate this pregnancy “really freak(ed) me out.”

But, ultimately, she needed to be with her husband as the two “mourned the life that we (had) envisioned.”

“Even though we are very scientific, factual people … you can still envision. I knew what the gender of this baby was going to be. I knew it had fingers and toes and a nose. It had all the makings that were of a baby,” Hall said.

She decided to go to Champaign.

During the weeklong wait, the fetus started to move more.

“After the results and knowing I’m planning to terminate this pregnancy, feeling her move was some of the most excruciating pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. Because this was a wanted pregnancy,” Hall said.

Traveling for an abortion

Hall compared packing for her abortion in Champaign to what expectant mothers pack before going to a hospital to give birth. It included comfort items, but also an eye mask and noise canceling headphones since she knew she’d be conscious during the procedure.

Hall and her husband split the two-hour drive before the 9 a.m. appointment. She remembers being grateful that no protesters were outside of the health facility, even though the waiting room filled up quickly with women from all walks of life — a Spanish-speaking family, an upper-middle class woman alone and a young Black couple.

A nurse met with Hall alone prior to distributing any medication, confirming that no one was coercing her into getting the abortion. She took medication to begin dilating, a process that took hours. She watched the Barbie movie on her iPad.

During the procedure itself, she listened to Taylor Swift’s Lover, a song that reminds her of her husband. Afterward, she talked to her daughter aloud, saying she was sorry and didn’t deserve this end.

“This wasn’t anything that anyone hoped was how her story would go, but I promised to not let her be forgotten and not let this be something that I would feel shame about,” Hall said.

Even when Hall had to take a six-week leave of absence from work in August as her mental health deteriorated, she emphasized that she never felt any regret. Instead, Hall was resolute about her decision.

But the experience, at times, left the daughter of a former Delaware County Sheriff feeling like a fugitive. She was advised to pay in cash and, should she experience complications and visit an emergency room, she was told to let health professionals believe she’d experienced another miscarriage.

“I felt dehumanized; I felt like a criminal. But you know what I never felt? I never felt religious guilt. I didn’t feel any of those social pressures,” Hall said. I would make the same decision 100 times out of 100.”

Both a journal entry shared by Hall and the interview were vivid in their descriptions, with crystalline descriptions of medical equipment and other patients.

When sharing her abortion story, Hall was clear eyed — something she worried would make her story less impactful or relatable.

“… I am just worried that, because I’ve done so much therapy and so much healing and so much soul searching, that I’m not going to come across as shattered and broken as people expect me to be,” Hall said.

She recounted that loss she and her husband had already experienced: the deaths of both of their fathers, her mother’s thyroid cancer diagnosis and recovery, and a miscarriage.

“My husband and I have been through a lot together,” Hall said. “… this was by far the most traumatic and awful thing I’ve even been through. I mean, it broke me and changed me as a person.

“I actually say, ‘When my daughter died, a part of me died.’ And I am no longer controlled by fear. I’m stepping forward into my power and this is part of that.”

Sharing her story became cathartic — a way to prove to herself that she wasn’t alone. She thought of the other women at the clinic, with downcast eyes and guilt on their faces.

“I’m hoping that if I can be as detailed as possible, and if I can be as open and as honest as possible, it’ll make those women who feel like they’re siloed and don’t have anyone … know that this is not something that no one else has experienced (and) that their feelings are valid. That, actually, there’s a community of people who have experienced the same thing,” Hall said.