Purdue students are calling on the Tippecanoe County Prosecutor to announce his position on Indiana’s looming near-total abortion ban.
Specifically, students hoped that Prosecutor Pat Harrington would decide not to enforce the state’s abortion restrictions – following in the footsteps of Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears.
Last week, Harrington told Lafayette reporter Dave Bangert that he had an “oath to uphold the law.”
Purdue student Ashley Mowle, who has been gathering signatures for a petition to send to Harrington, said that is still not clear enough.
“It sounds like he’s being a bit more of a politician who doesn’t want to explicitly make a stance on this bill that is generally unpopular among Hoosiers and residents of Tippecanoe County,” she said.
Mowle said prosecutors have some discretion about what kinds of cases they will pursue and how aggressively they will be pursued.
“We want him to specifically say that he’s going to prosecute doctors under SB1 who provide abortion services that will become illegal under this ban,” Mowle said. “We are disappointed that it’s not as direct as it could have been. We want him to not keep his answers as vague. We want a more clear response because we know that this ban is unpopular with Hoosiers and we deserve that clear response.”
As of Monday, Mowle and fellow students have gathered nearly 700 signatures on their petition calling for Harrington to take a stance on SB1.
During West Lafayette’s city council meeting earlier this month council member Democrat Ted Hardesty, who represents Purdue students, also called for Harrington to stake out a position and noted that many Purdue students are scared about what lies ahead for them once the abortion restrictions take effect.
Mowle said she’s also heard from students who didn’t realize the restrictions were going into effect and would impact them.
“There’s a concern that people from out of state or even folks from in-state will leave the state after this ban goes into effect, won’t want to stay here long term, and are processing in real time ‘wait this ban does affect me,’” she said.
Harrington declined to comment for this story. Indiana’s new abortion law goes into effect Sept. 15.
