The family of Mercedes Wells is demanding full accountability from Franciscan Health Crown Point after the Indiana mother was discharged while in active labor—only to give birth in a car eight minutes later.
Wells says the hospital not only failed her medically but also violated her dignity.
After six hours of contractions that grew to a minute apart, she says she never saw a doctor. Instead, a nurse insisted she wasn’t in labor and called security to escort her out.
Her husband, Leon, asked for a wheelchair. He was told to leave.
What happened next is the heart of the family’s call for justice: as they drove away from the hospital that denied them care, Leon spotted the baby’s head emerging. With no medical training and no time to spare, he pulled over on U.S. Route 231 and delivered his daughter himself.
“We were begging for help,” he ABC 7 News. “They pushed us out instead.”
The couple believes their race influenced the care they received—or the care they didn’t. They say their concerns were dismissed, their pain minimized, and their safety disregarded. Now they want answers, accountability, and a commitment that no other family will go through what they endured.
Their demand comes amid a national reckoning on Black maternal health, following another viral incident in Texas where a Black woman in clear distress was questioned rather than treated. Advocates say these stories reveal a consistent pattern: Black mothers’ voices are ignored until the situation turns dangerous.
Indiana’s statistics make the family’s call even more urgent. The state has some of the highest Black maternal mortality rates in the country, a crisis driven not by income or education but systemic bias—studies show Black mothers’ pain is more likely to be dismissed and their emergencies more likely to be downplayed.
What happened to the Wells family is no longer just their story. It is a case study in a system that continues to fail Black women at the moments they need help most.
For Mercedes and Leon, the safe arrival of their baby daughter is a relief. But relief is not closure. And survival is not justice.
“We should have been cared for,” Mercedes said. “Instead, we were forced into danger.”
The family wants the hospital to acknowledge what happened, take responsibility, and enact changes to ensure dignity and safety for every mother who walks through its doors—especially those who have long been ignored.
