What some are calling a “dangerous” escalation of Indiana’s abortion ban, others are calling a chance to close a gaping loophole.

They’re talking about a bill cracking down on abortion-inducing drugs in Indiana, which passed the state Senate on Jan. 27 by a 35-10 vote and represents the next frontier of the anti-abortion movement.

“In a post-Dobbs era, Indiana has chosen life,” bill author Sen. Tyler Johnson, R-Leo, said on the Senate floor. “This bill reinforces that choice by defining abortion clearly and providing civil tools to enforce our laws.”

Republican lawmakers have been eyeing these drugs in recent years since the felling of Roe v. Wade in 2022 and the abortion ban that immediately followed in Indiana. That law prohibits doctors here from providing abortions except in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal anomalies or when the pregnant person’s life is at risk, and says all medication abortions must be conducted in-person, not via telehealth.

But federal regulations do allow abortion-inducing drugs to be accessed through telehealth services and mailed to patients ― such as from abortion-allowing states to abortion-restricting states. That’s where the rub is.

“What we’re seeing is an influx, and people breaking the law and mailing these drugs directly to women. God forbid any of you physicians are complicit in that,” Sen. Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne, another author of Senate Bill 236, scolded a handful of doctors who came before the Senate judiciary committee to speak against the bill.

The bill would outlaw the manufacturing, mailing, prescribing or delivering of abortion-inducing drugs to Hoosiers not by making this a criminal act, but a civil one over which any citizen could wage a wrongful-death or whistleblower lawsuit.

In other words, any Hoosier who believes someone ordered a drug to perform an illegal abortion in Indiana could sue a person responsible for doing the manufacturing, mailing, prescribing or delivering. But exempt from liability are the pregnant mother, Indiana doctors and health facilities, internet service providers, transportation network companies and mail carriers. This means, though, that Hoosiers could sue out-of-state doctors.

“In the very rare instances where it is legal to prescribe the abortion bill, you will follow our laws and be licensed here,” Brown said. “You will not be mailing it.”

Those doing the suing can reap relief of at least $100,000 if they win, plus have their attorney’s fees paid by the defendant.

Indianapolis attorney Kathleen DeLaney likened this to bounty hunting.

“What’s really happening here is creating an army of private litigants standing in the name of the government seeking $100k bounties from others,” she said.

Though LaGrange Republican Sen. Sue Glick authored the original abortion ban in 2022, she sympathized with the bill’s opponents, saying the bill would have a “chilling effect” by forcing doctors to second-guess every little circumstance and then allowing non-experts to wage lawsuits.

“We’re sitting here making a decision to allow non-medical people make medical decisions on these issues and then we throw it to non-lawyers to litigate whether or not these were proper medical decisions,” she said during the judiciary committee hearing, before voting no. She voted in favor on the bill on the floor.

But Brown contended the only chilling effect will be on people providing illegal abortions, including via the mail.

“We’re looking for… bad actors obtaining these pills illegally to kill a baby,” she said on the Senate floor Jan. 26. “So yeah, we’re okay with suing them.”

More: Indiana already banned abortions. Now, state lawmakers are eyeing abortion pills.

Bill spurs confusion

Doctors who oppose the bill are not only concerned that the lawsuit-enabling language would add fear and confusion to the atmosphere in which they provide care, but they say so would a few other provisions in the bill.

For one, the bill amends slightly the definition of abortion to specifically exempt procedures done to expel a miscarriage, stillbirth or ectopic pregnancy.

But that leaves out a number of other scenarios that they now feel the need to call into question, such as a molar pregnancy, in which fetal body parts and even a heart beat can develop but won’t become an actual baby. Leaving such a pregnancy untreated can lead to cancer or infertility, said Dr. Erin Lips, a gynecologic oncologist at IU Health.

“In my last few years I’ve seen more new moms on death’s door in Indiana than I would have expected,” she said. “Cases like this will become more common.”

They are further concerned about the part of the bill that would add details required in terminated pregnancy reports ― including the name of the person who provided the abortion care ― and require these reports be filed to the office of the inspector general, in addition to the department of health.

At play in the background is an ongoing lawsuit over the question of whether these reports should be public documents subject to Indiana’s public records law. Attorney General Todd Rokita supports making them public, but a Marion County judge has temporarily declared them private medical records.

State lawmakers want additional oversight over the terminated pregnancy reports to make sure Indiana doctors aren’t performing abortions illegally. The doctors are fearful that added confusion over what counts as an illegal abortion will lead to delays in care, and thus risks to the patients’ health.

Those doctors and patients are also uncomfortable with personal patient data, such as their age, race and county that is listed in these reports, being seen by parties outside the department of health.

Danielle Spry, a Hendricks County mother who said she had a second-trimester abortion in 2019 due to a catastrophic disability she learned about 20 weeks along, said the idea that her private medical decision would be examined by people outside the medical field is “violating.”

“How dare any of you look at me and say you would have done anything different,” she said.

How common are medication abortions in Indiana?

Since the abortion ban actually took effect in late 2023, the state health department has reported about 30 to 40 abortions a quarter, compared to pre-ban figures of about 2,000 a quarter, according to the department’s aggregate abortion reporting.

Of those 42 abortions performed in the third quarter of 2025, about a quarter were done using abortion-inducing drugs Misoprostol and Mifepristone. This data only accounts for abortions performed in medical settings that are reported to the state and may not present a complete picture, however.