Democratic AG nominee Destiny Wells focuses campaign on medical and workers’ rights

Destiny Wells speaks to reporters after her Saturday, July 13, 2024, win to become the attorney general Democratic nominee. (Whitney Downard/Indiana Capital Chronicle)

Democratic Attorney General nominee Destiny Wells on Tuesday said she would strengthen the state’s medical privacy protections, workers’ rights and the integrity of the state office if elected.

She said her policy focuses have not changed since she launched her campaign in late 2023.

Wells shared her priorities during a press conference three days after party delegates chose her as their nominee for attorney general. Wells beat her competitor, Beth White, CEO of the Indiana Coalition to End Sexual Assault and Human Trafficking, with 69% of the vote.

The Army National Guard lieutenant colonel will run against Republican nominee and incumbent Attorney General Todd Rokita in the general election, who she took time to criticize during Tuesday’s event. Rokita ran unopposed at the Indiana Republican convention in June.

Women’s reproductive care

Under Wells’ leadership, she said the attorney general’s office would immediately stop asking the Indiana Department of Health to release individual terminated pregnancy reports . Access to terminated pregnancy reports, which the IDOH stopped releasing last December, is currently tied up in court . She argued that because the number of abortion procedures in the state has decreased since Indiana’s near-total abortion ban went into effect, the reports could be used to identify the patients.

“We need to tread lightly and cautiously as we have a lower amount of abortions in the state,” Wells said. “That is not going to require any legislative action via the legislature on behalf of the AG, that is something that we can do internally and we’ll do immediately.”

Lawmakers, could however, clarify the statute on its own.

During Tuesday’s press conference, Wells highlighted how she thought Rokita and his office’s actions have negatively impacted maternal healthcare in the state.

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“We know that the effects of the last couple of years have caused our OBGYNs to flee the state and that this is, overall, having an impact on health care access for everyday Hoosiers,” Wells said. “It’s not just the abortions that are being conducted in the shadows that people could turn a blind eye to anymore. It’s having an impact on the AGs office or on the state as a whole.”

In 2023, the Indiana Supreme Court reprimanded Rokita for his televised comments about Indiana OBGYN Caitlin Bernard, who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio in 2022 and told the Indianapolis Star about the procedure. The state Medical Licensing Board later disciplined Bernard for publicly discussing the medical procedure.

Integrity of Attorney General’s Office

If elected, Wells said she would remove Indiana as a party of amicus curiae briefs — also known as “friend of the court” briefs, which allow individuals or organizations that are not parties in a legal case to share information with a court — for many federal lawsuits, specifically cases that don’t impact “Hoosier issues.” Rokita has signed onto several multi-state amicus briefs, including a call on a U.S appeals court to provide former President Donald Trump with additional legal protections during the search of his Mar-a-Lago home for classified documents.

“Our actions aren’t resulting in better results for Hoosiers,” she said. “We’re just highly distracted on these issues. Most of them have to do with undermining executive authority.”

Democrat delegates nominate Destiny Wells for attorney general

Additionally, Wells said she would also stop requiring office employees to sign expansive non-disclosure agreements.

“It’s antithetical to everything we say we want to do in government and in regards to being transparent and that is what we’re going to do,” she said.

Wells also said she would want to look at establishing a “Children’s Bill of Rights” — a purposeful contrast to Rokita’s “Parents’ Bill of Rights.” The “Parents’ Bill of Rights” is a document that outlines parents’ legal rights to oversee and participate in their children’s’ education. It addresses topics including school governance, curriculum, religious liberty, health and vaccine information, library books and pronoun-change notifications. Wells said she believed the document has been used to pit parents against educators and use “children and their education as a partisan tool.”

Part of the “Children’s Bill of Rights,” would focus on regulating homeschooling in the state, she said, to protect children from potential abuse or educational neglect. She said the attorney general’s office could use these regulations to make sure people don’t “take advantage of the hard work” of homeschooling parents.

Workers’ rights

Wells said, if elected, she would use the attorney general office’s resources to support local prosecutors who tackle issues including wage theft and the misclassification of employees. Her plans also include establishing a workers’ rights board.

“I feel like that’s what makes our campaign great—that we make sure that we are devising policy points that will best Hoosier outcomes,” she said. “That will ensure that employers treat workers with dignity and respect.”

She also said the attorney general’s office would establish a workers’ rights task force and use its authority to investigate labor, sexual and human trafficking. One of her priorities would be rebuilding a human trafficking investigatory office.

“I’ve had sit downs with local prosecutors into their challenges and being able to keep up with trafficking,” Wells said. “A lot of it is because people are transient, they leave their county. And so what I want is to see a larger state umbrella to help those local prosecutors with those issues.”

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