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Indiana Abortion Bills

Lauren

Dr. B. details several of the abortion bills coming through the state legislature.

  1. Yearly inspections of abortion clinics AND declaring a fetus viable at 20 weeks (sneaky, eh?)
  2. Doctors must tell patients that they can see an ultrasound and hear the heartbeat before the procedure.
  3. Considers clinics where abortions are done, outpatient surgical centers. Forcing them to upgrade their facilities.
  4. Requires doctors to offer anesthesia before the procedure for a fetus of at least 20 weeks.
  5. Makes it a felony for a pregnant woman to take meds such as codeine without a prescription (can anyone else see where this one is going??)
  6. Allows employees to refuse to give abortion and birth control pills and health care workers to refuse to participate in abortion procedures.
  7. Requires public schools to incorporate fetal development and information about the health consequences of an early termination of pregnancy into their curriculum.

This is too easy:
1a) Viability can only be determined on a case-by-case basis. No overarching legislature will determine the viability of an individual fetus.

1b) Throwing a perfectly viable measure in with a rather controversial measure is cheap politics. Let the bills survive on their own merit, not because you tacked them on and tried to sneak them past one’s peers and constituents.

2) I doubt this will change as many minds of pregnant women as it will make women feel guilty, punished, and perhaps add to the nonexistent claims of PAS rates.

3) This is a common procedure intended to force financially-strapped abortion clinics to shut their doors because they cannot afford to upgrade their facilities. Abortions can be performed anywhere where proper sanitization can occur. While this bill might seem like a good one, its intentions are not.

4) Sure, fine. But let’s not forget the reasons behind bill no. 2.

5) Standard bill that tries to criminalize drug addiction in the name of “saving the baby.”

6) No worker should be allowed to refuse to dispense medication, especially medication that prevents abortion in the first place. Similar “moral” bills around the country have allowed medical workers to refuse giving medical care to gays and lesbians under the guise of “good conscience.”

7a) The only medical consequence of a terminated pregnancy is the termination of a pregnancy. This is a transparent attempt at making public schools dispense the faulty information “linking” breast cancer and abortion, a link disproven again and again by uninvested science. Because conseling is already required before and after an abortion service is provided, this bill is patently bunk.

7b) Information on fetal development is already a part of the state sex ed curriculum. If you want misleading info on the state educational system, ask a Hoosier Republican politician.

7c) Before we add more to the sex ed curriculum we should reinstate all information regarding safe sex, sexual self-esteem, and the appropriate, scientifically accurate information available so kids can make good choices, not uninformed choices.

5 thoughts on Indiana Abortion Bills

  1. I love the part I read in the Indianapolis Star about this issue, where that pro-life woman who got in Linda Zimmerman’s face said, ‘I wanted to give her a hug and tell her that I was trying to protect women.’ Yeah, I’m sure. Barf. And the emphasis on all the crying that was done over this issue by our elected officials. Jesus. These people need to grow up.

  2. hell in a hand basket i’m telling you, hell in a fucking handbasket. Why does canada have to be so damn cold?!?

    wouldn’t it be nice to be queen for a day and have the countries undivided attention? Broadcast over school t.v. stations, ESPN, CNN, MTV, TNT, etc. all at the same time interupt the world for a few moments and use that time to smack some sense into people? I think people shoud disagree don’t get me wrong, but come ON, i am truly truly truly tired of the government
    A) thinking i’m an idiot
    B) not representing me or my “kind” in any way shape or form, and
    C) shoving their religious morals and ideals down my throat

    wow, and all i was gonna say was that canada is cold

  3. GAAHHH! Fucking pharmacists trying to get out of dispensing the Pill! Look, dispensing medication is your job. If you have a conflict with that, find another career. You know how long I would last on the job if I told my foreman, “Sorry, I don’t really like pulling wire or running conduit. I just want to make terminations, preferrably in a panel.” I’d have my last check before I got the whole sentence out of my mouth! (And actually, terminating is boring. I much prefer running the conduit and pulling wire!)

    The twenty weeks viability stems from the fact that there is one documented case of a girl born at twenty weeks who is now older and has no health problems (she is still much smaller than average). One case. It’s also to get people thinking that abortions occur closer to twenty weeks than say, six or eight weeks. Second trimester abortions are not common, and usually occur for health reasons.

    Drugs? Prescription drugs? That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are folks out there who want to criminalize damn near anything a pregnant woman does besides breathe. And there are those who assume every miscarriage, premature birth, or health problem of the baby is somehow the fault of the mother. Trust me, I’ve had my share of the hairy eyeball.

    Want to give high schoolers some extra classes? How about a class on early childhood and human development?! Maybe if we teach more people, particularly our young people, about the importance of the early years of development, maybe by another generation we’d have people who would demand and vote for policies that would demonstrate an actual level of support for and caring about children, rather than fucking lip service while gutting the programs that can make a permanent difference in the lives of human beings (like Early Start, Head Start, WIC, etc.).

  4. Codeine a felony? So if a pregnant woman gets a toothache and, while she’s waiting for a root canal, instead of getting a new prescription, uses her husband’s leftover codeine from the last time he needed a root canal, she’s suddenly an actual felon? Are there really lots of pregnant women abusing codeine or what? What is it with legislation that assumes women are their babies’ enemies?

  5. This is not all by a long shot . . . I learned from this morning’s paper that there was a bill recently introduced in the ND legislature to make abortion equal to murder. Thankfully it was defeated, but I find it interesting that the public had to find out about it through an offhanded mention in a “capitol correspondent” column in our local paper. North Dakotans ultra-conservative? Who’da thunk?

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