Patient records found at shuttered Indiana abortion clinics

Officers from the Fort Wayne Police Department search the building that once housed an abortion clinic owned by Dr. Ulrich Klopfer on Thursday, Sept. 19, 2019, in Fort Wayne, Ind. After the doctor's death on Sept. 3, more than 2,000 medically preserved fetal remains were found in the garage of his home in rural Crete, Ill. (Eric Ginnard/The Herald-News via AP) Officers from the Fort Wayne Police Department search the building that once housed an abortion clinic owned by Dr. Ulrich Klopfer on Thursday, Sept. 19, 2019, in Fort Wayne, Ind. After the doctor's death on Sept. 3, more than 2,000 medically preserved fetal remains were found in the garage of his home in rural Crete, Ill. (Eric Ginnard/The Herald-News via AP)

By Associated Press September 20, 2019 3 min read

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Investigators found thousands of abandoned medical records at three shuttered Indiana abortion clinics that were operated by a late doctor who took home more than 2,200 sets of fetal remains, Indiana’s attorney general said Friday.

No fetal remains were found during Thursday’s searches of Dr. Ulrich Klopfer’s former clinics and other properties in Gary, South Bend and Fort Wayne, Attorney General Curtis Hill said at a news conference. But he said thousands of patient medical records were discovered, though he didn’t give an exact number.

Women getting abortions have “a high degree of expectation of privacy and confidentiality,” but the medical records found at Klopfer’s clinics had simply been “abandoned” there, Hill said. The Fort Wayne clinic closed in 2014, and the Gary and South Bend clinics closed the following year.

Hill said his office hopes to determine why 2,246 sets of fetal remains from abortions performed in 2000, 2001 and 2002 in Indiana ended up in the garage of Klopfer’s home in Will County, Illinois. Klopfer died on Sept. 3 and his widow and her sister found the remains last week and alerted the authorities.