Tag Archives: abortion

PLEASE Make Them Stop!

It’s no longer possible for us mere mortals to keep up with the craziness in the Indiana General Assembly.

Yesterday, Doug Masson posted about House Bill 1123.

It prohibits a health insurance policy from covering abortion services provided by a medical provider except that it can provide such coverage if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or if an abortion is necessary “to avert the pregnant woman’s death or a substantial an irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.” However such coverage may be provided through an endorsement or rider.

The paternalism and anti-abortion zealotry that led to this particular effort to tell insurance companies what they can and cannot cover, and how, joins a raft of other equally high-handed measures.

Does your local government want to ask its citizens what modes of transportation they want –and what they’re willing to pay? Tough. We know better than you what’s good for you.

Does your local sheriff want to sponsor a gun buy-back to get weapons off the street? Don’t try it. Our gun freaks will not only forbid it, they’ll add a measure letting  you bring a gun to school.

Who do you businesses and local governments think you are, anyway–trying to make your own decisions?

Whatever happened to the self-described legislative champions of free enterprise–the pro-business folks who advocate limiting regulations to those absolutely necessary to protect the public? Where are all the staunch defenders of local control–the legislators so protective of their prerogatives that they deep-sixed Common Core? (How dare anyone suggest that Indiana schoolchildren learn the same math and history as kids in other states?)

I guess when the General Assembly talks about “liberty” and “local control,” it means liberty from federal rules and the right to control everything else.

Comments

They Just Can’t Help Themselves

Senate Bill 371, currently passing easily through the various stages of the legislative process, requires facilities that dispense abortion-inducing drugs to meet all the structural and operational specifications of facilities that provide surgical abortions. In other words, in order for a clinic to prescribe or supply a pill to induce a very early abortion, its facilities must rival those of a hospital or surgical center.
SB 371 also requires the physician providing such a prescription to provide the patient with materials–colors specified!–oversee ultrasound imaging, and document efforts to have the woman return in two weeks for a follow-up examination and ultrasound.
This bill has nothing to with women’s safety. It has everything to do with limiting the availability of safe and legal abortion.  As a side effect, it also limits the availability of all reproductive health care for low-income women.  Note the language: it applies only to “clinics.” None of the standards in SB 371 apply to private physicians who dispense abortion-inducing drugs.
The restrictions apply only to “clinics”–read, Planned Parenthood– that provide health care at low cost.
Medication abortion is a safe, early-stage procedure.  SB 371 is an unwarranted interference with the doctor-patient relationship, not to mention an unconstitutional effort to deny some women but not others access to reproductive health services by forcing the closure of the clinics that serve them. This measure is yet another salvo in the GOP’s ongoing war on Planned Parenthood. and a woman’s right to make her own moral decisions.
On the other hand, the perennially cash-strapped ACLU can use the legal fees that will be generated when it wins the inevitable legal challenge. So I suppose there is a bright side to everything.
Comments

Mourdock’s Akin Moment

Richard Mourdock has a problem. Unlike his ideological clone, Mike Pence, he has a tendency to tell the truth. About 45 minutes into the Senate debate, he was asked about his pro-life beliefs, and whether those beliefs included an exception for rape and/or incest.

In the course of the explanation Mourdock suggested that rape should not be an exception to a ban on abortion, since rape pregnancies are themselves the will of God.

“You know, this is that issue for that every candidates for federal, or even state office, faces. And I, too, certainly stand for life,” said Mourdock, after both Democrat Joe Donnelly and Libertarian Andrew Horning had identified as pro-life, though Donnelly also stated his support for an exception in cases of rape. “I know there are some who disagree, and I respect their point of view. But I believe that life begins at conception. The only exception I have, to have an abortion, is in that case of the life of the mother.”

Mourdock then seemed to choke back tears, and continued: “I’ve struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from god. And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” (Emphasis added.)

Talking Points Memo, among others, has the video.

I hope some enterprising reporter–assuming we still have a few of those left–asks the Republican gubernatorial candidate whether he agrees. On the record.

Comments

What Planet Did You Say This Is?

During a televised interview, Missouri Representative Todd Akin, who is running for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Claire McCaskill, was asked about his position on abortion. Rep. Akin favors a complete ban, with no exception for rape or incest. He explained that an exception for rape was unnecessary, since victims of legitimate rape don’t get pregnant. The woman’s body “has a way to deal with that.”

Leaving aside the question of what constitutes “legitimate” rape, the more important questions are how this moron has managed to get elected, and how he won a statewide Republican primary. (He evidently serves on the House Subcommittee on Science, no less–a terrifying prospect.)

According to various reports, Akin sponsored legislation that would redefine rape in federal law to limit funding for abortion providers, and has a long track record of uninformed and extreme views about women’s health. He has a consistently radical  voting record on women’s issues, wants to ban the morning-after pill, and–my personal favorite– has expressed concern that criminalizing marital rape gives women “a legal weapon to beat up on the husband” during a divorce.

This guy is a real piece of work.

But before we laugh too hard at the people who actually voted to place this man in a position of authority, perhaps we should look at one of the men we have sent to Congress. Not only sent to Congress, but are likely to elevate to the top position in the state.

Google–as I did–Pence and Akin. You’ll find that they have co-sponsored several measures–one that would have distinguished between “forcible” and “other” rapes, one to de-fund Planned Parenthood, one to get rid of the Department of Energy, another to make English America’s “official” language….In fact, when I searched for “Pence Akin co-sponsor,” I got 1,730,000 hits. Obviously, hundreds if not thousands were duplicates, and thousands of others were perfectly innocuous… still, it became clear scrolling through them that Akin and Pence are cut from the same (poorly woven) cloth.

The only difference is that Mike Pence understands–as Akin clearly does not–that he needs to reinvent himself as someone who actually cares about Indiana’s economy and job creation, rather than the social issues which have been his major focus as a congressperson.

Unlike Akin, he realizes he needs to soft-pedal the crazy.

Comments