“Throughout my public career, I have stood for the sanctity of life. HEA 1337 is a comprehensive pro-life measure that affirms the value of all human life, which is why I signed it into law today.
“I believe that a society can be judged by how it deals with its most vulnerable—the aged, the infirm, the disabled and the unborn. HEA 1337 will ensure the dignified final treatment of the unborn and prohibits abortions that are based only on the unborn child's sex, race, color, national origin, ancestry, or disability, including Down syndrome.
“Some of my most precious moments as Governor have been with families of children with disabilities, especially those raising children with Down syndrome. These Hoosiers never fail to inspire me with their compassion and these special children never fail to move me with their love and joy.
“By enacting this legislation, we take an important step in protecting the unborn, while still providing an exception for the life of the mother. I sign this legislation with a prayer that God would continue to bless these precious children, mothers and families.”Indiana law generally restricts abortions after twenty weeks. Pro-choice groups will no doubt file a lawsuit to contest the constitutionality of the law since it would appear to encroach on her constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy during the first 20 weeks under privacy and liberty rights the Supreme Court says are guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment.
Pence later issued a signing statement for another bill he signed into law that replaces all male-specific pronouns in the Indiana Code with gender neutral pronouns. "I’m proud to sign it into law and hope it serves as a source of encouragement for future generations of women leaders here in Indiana,” Pence said. Do you think that will be enough to placate his detractors? Probably not.
Its completely and thoroughly unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has guaranteed the right to abortion in the first 20 weeks. Indiana does not have the authority to limit that. Pence is overreaching. And he's a fool for taking on an issue that will be so polarizing and will certainly be decided against him in the Federal Courts. He was always just a preacher at heart. Certainly not a chief executive. He's making a big personal statement. But in the end he will embarrass the State in the national press, and then be slapped down by a District Court. Why is he so slow? Why?
ReplyDeleteGreat political move by Pence. The law outlaws abortions when a specific, odious purpose is the intent. If a court is going to enjoin implementation, the judge will basically be stating that discrimination on the basis of race, sex or disability are protected by _Roe_, _Casey_ & their progeny. Any plaintiffs in the case will essentially be forced to argue that the "penumbral" rights from _Roe_ somehow permit destruction of the child in the womb even if the motivation is abhorrent.
ReplyDeleteAnon 7:05,
ReplyDeleteYou're assuming that court precedent is forever can't be overturned. You need to have a vehicle to overturn or further cut back on Roe v. Wade and the Indiana law might be the vehicle to do it. While I understand the approach taken in the law, I prefer the approach of trying to dial back the time when abortion is permitted. Second trimester abortions are extremely repugnant and unpopular.
If Democrats want to run on the right to abort children because they have Down's Syndrome they would be pretty foolish to do so.
"The national organization facing video evidence of their numerous felonies is a criminal organization with a side line for decades of selling baby parts. Taxpayers have footed the bills. I think the latest video includes the admission that the barbaric partial birth abortions (which are against Federal Law) are still being done in order to obtain top dollar high quality baby parts. Good for the Star in covering up these Nazi like barbarians." These amoral parasites in the business of baby murder for profit already have their bottom dwelling parasite lawyers on speed dial.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Constitution, part of the Trump movement is to call bullshit on lawyers and their word games. There is nothing in the Constitution as written or modified that has anything at all to do with baby murder. Seems to be a fact that Republicans wished to practice genocide on Blacks and now Democrats do.
Based upon over 40 years of US Supreme Court decisions, it doesn't take a genius to declare HEA 1337 unconstitutional. But with ideologues facts don't matter so appeal, then appeal, then have SCOTUS refuse to hear the case. See the millions that taxpayers can save in lawyer fees but nothing can be done to save the reputations of politicians who demand to have one foot in your bedroom.
ReplyDeleteHere's the problem with this law. A woman gets pregnant. She's got a big trip planned to Florida in three months. She doesn't want a baby bump when she goes to the beach. The law doesn't stop her from getting an abortion. Another pregnant mother learns the child she is carrying has a severe birth defect that will dramatically affect the child's quality of life and require lots of money she doesn't have to care for. She can't get an abortion, but the woman who wanted to look her best for her Florida vacation gets to have her abortion.
ReplyDeleteMy only concern is to whether or not this equates to "socialists moving".
ReplyDeleteAny of you leaving the state?
I was wondering what that popping sound was this morning. I thought someone was boiling corn. Turns out it was liberal heads exploding across the metro. I'd say across the state, but the metro pretty much covers liberal reach in Indiana.
ReplyDeleteI really wish that the US could adopt a similiar abortion policy of our friend Israel. If a woman wants an abortion, sure, have it, hell, the Israeli gov't even pays for it. How's that sit with you Israeli loving republicans?
ReplyDeleteBut as long as hot tubs are legal, women can induce their own abortion but soaking for 20-40 minutes in a hot tub at 104 degrees or higher. That alone will cause a miscarriage. I know of a chick here in Hamilton Co and that's what she does anytime she misses her period. Works for her, would likely work for someone else.
I don't suppose we will see companion legislation providing full, paid medical care for these disabled children. Raising a Down Syndrome child is an enormous responsibility and cost. And now we have these terrible birth abnormalities caused by Zika. And these terribly damaged children born to those addicted to drugs. Forcing women to have children they don't have the ability to care for is just wrong. Forcing them to have children which will impoverish them without providing for any of their care is not the moral high ground. Pence should keep his stinking opinions to himself and his hands off our bodies; as if we all cared about his religious views. I hope the national press skewers him to the wall and invades his reproductive organs.
ReplyDeleteI'm proud to say Representative Cindy Kirchofer, my representative from our far east side neighborhoods down German Church Road, voted against this bill, even though she is Republican, believing it was overreaching. When do these old, white men in the Statehouse stop telling women what they can and can't do with their bodies?
ReplyDeleteIts really a law against Doctors. It limits their ability to counsel abortion if they are told its because of disability or race. So if a woman goes to her obstetrician, finds out she's pregnant, then finds out she's having a Down's baby or a Zika deformed baby, she has knowledge, and her doctor has knowledge, and no one can talk about abortion without Doctors losing their license.
ReplyDeleteIt also won't permit any doctor to perform an abortion who doesn't have hospital admitting rights, which we already know is code for closing down clinics, and has worked so "well" in some States that abortions are nearly impossible for women who can't travel to other States.
It makes Indiana the most restrictive State in the U.S. now for abortion law, thrusting us again into the forefront of repressive movement on social issues. The RFRA fight effectively ruined further talk of Pence as presidential material. What will this horrible, horrible development in abortion law do to us, and do we really want to forevermore prevent our sisters and daughters from being able to abort a deformed Zika baby or Down's syndrome baby, or to have such a difficult time finding an abortion provider that they must travel to do so, which we all know leads to terrible results in back rooms for the poor.
Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky said it will ask a court to block the measure before that can happen.
ReplyDelete"It is clear that the governor is more comfortable practicing medicine without a license than behaving as a responsible lawyer, as he picks and chooses which constitutional rights are appropriate," the group's head, Betty Cockrum, said in a statement.
A hearty KUDOS to Gary's 5:20 AM post, and Anonymous/ 7:57 AM post!!
ReplyDeleteSome of the best remarks I've read for months!
Gary, I see this more of a public policy tool to influence the culture. It places those who support abortion on demand into the uncomfortable position of having to defend killing unborn children BECAUSE OF disabilities, gender, etc.
ReplyDeleteAnon1:04, don't blame pro-lifers in & out of the Gen'l Assembly: place the blame on the _Roe_ & _Doe_ majorities for coming up with the idea of "penumbral rights" that somehow trump the states' police power to protect human life. The Supreme Court decided to federalize this issue, when its proper place in a federal republic should've been at the state level. Look no further than those 9 worthies to cast blame.
How exactly is the part of this law forbidding abortion for reasons set forth in the Act supposed to be enforced? Will physicians be required to interrogate their patients and demand that they give a "reason" for wanting an abortion, force them to take a polygraph test to prove they aren't lying, or what? What happens if a physician proceeds with the abortion even after being advised that the mother knows she was infected with the Zika virus before she got pregnant? Are physicians going to become abortion police?
ReplyDeleteMaybe this law is really about drumming up business for the Governor's pet law firms who will defend the statute in Court after the inevitable constitutional challenge. The way his career is going, Pence isn't going to have much longer to dole out our tax dollars to outside law firms.
I liked it a lot better back in the day when Planned Parenthood admitted that abortion was murder. That reality remains. The rest is just noise.
ReplyDeleteThis is not a theocracy and we don't have to live by your religious rules, or even respect them. The idea of separation of church and state calls for a secular legislature. This is a slap across the face of every Democrat and every woman who believes in the right of a woman to decide issues about her own body by herself. Super religious freaks who want to control everybody are just asking for federal review of this law and an embarrassing slap themselves. I have had enough of Mike Pence. He has to go. This bill was the last straw. That man is not fit to lead this State if he thinks that bill will pass constitutional muster. What an idiot.
ReplyDeleteAll i ever read from these elected politicians is I I I. They are elected by the people and not for there own single minded beliefs they think they have. I do not care about their personal beliefs. I am a vet and fought for they can have a say but remember they are elected to represent their people and not for their own beliefs.
ReplyDeleteAlso while I am at it just look at all of the money they waste and spend on all of these laws which are best for us. Could not that money be more well spent on worthwhile items like a cell phone law with solid teeth in it to save lives and would require a no brainer passage at little or no expense except to the cell phone carriers which I would say own the politicians in Indiana.
Mike Pence’s sadistic abortion law: Wow. Tired of harassing the lgbt, Indiana passes a draconian anti-choice bill geared towards humiliating and bankrupting women who have abortions. The bill is one of those omnibus anti-choice bills Republicans are fond of these days, a giant bill stuffed with as many asinine restrictions on abortion with an eye towards making abortion as miserable and humiliating an experience as possible, and ideally something women can’t get legally at all. The sadism of the whole thing is truly breathtaking.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, Pence and Indiana Republicans have not expanded services for families with disabled children to go along with this bill forcing childbirth on women. If they really cared about the wellbeing of disabled children, they would want them to be provided for. Forcing them on women who don’t have the capacity to raise a disabled child and then refusing to help with the child’s care is not what compassion actually looks like.
On top of making women drive far away to have legal abortions, they also have to submit to be counseled, and they have to listen to the fetal heartbeat with a doctor; there is the financially bizarre new rule that the aborted remains be cremated and interred, both of those things costing tons of money and requiring the hiring of a funeral director. Thanks Mike Pence. Just what we wanted. An old white evangelical preacher forcing women into yet more unfortunate financial situations.
Contraceptive abortion is murder & it doesn't require faith affiliation to understand that. A baby's O2 exchange status is an irrational excuse; in vs ex vitro. Abortion proponents however, are cultish in their insistence on public funding; forcing the bodies of others to labor in service to the tyranny of THEIR abortion demands.
ReplyDeleteAnon1:02, Title 9 forbids gender-based discrimination. The ADA bans disability-based discrimination. Neither is based on religion. This law does both and has no more a religious basis than do Title 9 and the ADA.
ReplyDeleteAnon 8:39 I'd be more inclined to respect your "what women can and can't do with their bodies" argument if you gave a care about the women who are ripped out of the womb for the sake of expediency and vanity. It's murder, no matter what you and the chattering classes call it. No, wait, murder is when it happens one time. When it's millions of times, it's genocide.
ReplyDelete"She doesn't want a baby bump when she goes to the beach. The law doesn't stop her from getting an abortion."
ReplyDeleteGary I understand what you are saying, but doesn't your example - the ability to get an abortion for any reason - really show how low we have sunk? How little some value human life!
Some people have looked at allowing parents/mother to have their baby killed up to a certain age. Search the Internet for After Birth Abortion. Not here, yet, and not legal, but at one time abortion was not legal either.
So, is the lawsuit gong to be against Planned Parenthood for not taking orders for baby body parts?
ReplyDeleteDo they have shareholder's(other than the democrat party)? How many statutory rapists has PP turned in to Indiana authorities?
What a bunch of weird Indiana fanatics you are. A woman has the right to an abortion in the first trimester. Roe v Wade. Beat your Bibles all you want. You follow the parts of the Bible that suit you and you impose your silly rules on everybody else. Witness the Alabama governor, droning on and on about one man one woman marriage; now caught having phone sex with an aide, his wife divorcing him. Its just the hypocrites you are that you profess to above the murder while incessantly funding the largest, deadliest military in the history of the planet. We support abortion so that women don't end up pregnant before they are ready and able to want their child. We give them a chance to go to college, get married, and choose the time to have children. It isn't murder, you're so stupidly brainwashed by your weak minded devotion to a God. How about you mind your own business and leave other women to mind theirs without reference to your silly religion.
ReplyDeleteYes, Whizzer White was an Indiana fanatic. Chew on this if you want to worship at the feet of Roe:
ReplyDeletehttp://womenshistory.about.com/library/etext/gov/bl_roe_m.htm
"We support abortion so that women don't end up pregnant before they are ready and able to want their child."
ReplyDelete:V
Did you read that before you typed it?
"The Supreme Court has guaranteed the right to abortion in the first 20 weeks."
ReplyDeleteThe Supreme Court is not the legislative branch. The Supreme Court can't just enact laws.
At its best, an argument might be made that the Supreme Court can invalidate an existing law, but invalidating a law is not the same as enacting into law the negative of the overturned law.
Liberals love the the Supreme Court, because liberals fail at using real government to get their nutty laws passed.
...and you don't think the Congress enacts "nutty" laws? Sorry, but despite what conservatives love to toss out there, the Supreme Court is the law of the land. Legislatures enact all sorts of stupid laws, and if you don't know that then you don't read much, and the Courts are great deciders to protect us from ideologues like Pence and his little theocratic cabal. I believe in separation of church and state. We don't need restrictions on women's rights. We need restrictions on too much religious interference in personal liberties.
ReplyDeleteNo Anon 6:48, the Constitution is the law of the land; a document inextricable from the Declaration of Independence which observes rights to LIFE, LIBERTY & the pursuit of HAPPINESS. "Weird" is the tyrannic notion that some citizens must labor in service to the abortive desires of other citizens, who would steal or abuse their property / labor to that end.
ReplyDeleteLiberals cry and beg for a democracy, then run to the constitution when the democracy doesn't go their way.
ReplyDeleteNobody said you couldn't murder to cover up poor life choices. Just that you'll be doing it somewhere else on your own dime.
Think of how much more free and safer you will feel in Russia, Cuba, China, pick a socialist bastion (not many left!)
Please. If you old Christians don't want to have an abortion, then don't have one. Lock up your daughters. Get ready to enforce that shotgun marriage. For the rest of us, just stay out of our business. A girl in our family got pregnant after a boy at a party got a little too pushy on her after a party. Nobody "wanted" an abortion. But everybody wanted her to go on to college. Now she's married to a great guy of her own choice, she has her education, and two children that they were prepared for emotionally and financially. Nobody in our family thinks her very early abortion was a murder. Such hyperbole from you bible thumpers. Go handle snakes or talk in tongues, Christian ideologues. Leave the rest of us alone. We're doing just fine without your mystical beliefs and your terrible, hypocritical morality.
ReplyDeletedoing fine at tap dancing around "accountability and responsibility"
ReplyDeletePS: I managed a bar in Broad Ripple for 5 years. It takes two to tango.
Ahahahahahahaha a cherry picking anecdote
Does the law prohibit parents from choosing to abort a child if it has a genetic propensity of being gay?
ReplyDelete"Nobody "wanted" an abortion. But everybody wanted her to go on to college."
ReplyDeleteI understand that you are saying that the girl in your family did not agree to the sex - it was rape. She had an abortion, went to college, got married and has two other children. Only she knows how the abortion still affects her. It does, believe me.
Please don't trivialize her choice to kill her first baby. She killed a human being - not a blob of cells.
And don't forget that this child who was killed did not get a chance to go to college, get married or have children. Those "choices" were taken away by the girl in your family and those who influenced her decision.
And 9:38 is an accomplice to murder, 3:34.
ReplyDeleteThank you for an excellent response, 3:34.
Sorry, I guess I'm more in agreement with the guy, or woman, who approved of the girl's abortion. More of a "blob" than a baby in those early weeks. Not a killing. Get over yourselves. Also know plenty of girls from Christian families who have had abortions, even though their parents won't admit.
ReplyDeleteAnon 8:35 AM
ReplyDeleteThe poster did not say at what time in the pregnancy the girl had her abortion. Blob, fetus or baby - semantics. It IS a baby and can only mature (in a healthy pregnancy) into a full term BABY! A human baby, nothing else.
Why do some pro-choice people believe that a human baby only has rights once it has been born? And please remember that the baby has it's own distinct DNA. It is different than the mother's or father's DNA.
It is a unique life. It deserves protection.
I know. Like the pastors that condemn homosexuals and then get caught in the mens room or advertising on Grindr. Just the way it is. The more they condemn or bellyache about something th e more they are hiding something. They can't seem to live and let live. EWveybody has to do things their way, because some God they believe in. The rest of us live in the real world.
ReplyDeleteThe editorial stance at NUVO is that HEA 1337 does not protect the interests of pro-choice or anti-choice women. It does not, in fact, protect women and children at all. HEA 1337 violates Roe vs. Wade and, in many cases, could endanger the lives of mothers across the state. It is a piece of legislation that was rushed through the Statehouse, and a bill that many self-identified pro-life legislators voted against.
ReplyDeleteSimply put, HEA 1337 makes Indiana the most hostile state for women’s rights in the nation.
NUVO will begin a series of articles on aspects of this terrible, terrible mistake.
An Irish schoolteacher who came to a Jerusalem hospital convinced she was about to give birth to the Baby Jesus when in fact she was not even pregnant.
ReplyDeleteA Canadian tourist who believed he was the Biblical strongman Sampson and tried to tear stone blocks out of the Wailing Wall.
An Austrian man who flew into a rage in his hotel kitchen when staff refused to prepare the the Last Supper for him.
These are just a few examples of what has come to be known as the Jerusalem Syndrome: a well-documented phenomenon where foreign visitors suffer psychotic delusions that they are figures from the Bible or harbingers of the End of Days.
Israel’s health ministry records around 50 cases a year where a tourist’s delusions are so strong that police or mental health professionals are forced to intervene. Many more incidents go undocumented on the streets of Jerusalem’s Old City.
The city’s hospitals are expecting fresh cases as tourists flock to Jerusalem for the Easter weekend and doctors are preparing now-familiar routines of alerting foreign embassies that one their citizens believes he is John the Baptist or King Solomon.
Evidence of the Jerusalem Syndrome dates back to Medieval times and observers throughout the centuries have noted the air of madness that seems to hang over the city.
As J.E. Hanauer, a British traveller and Anglican vicar, wrote in around 1870: “It is an odd fact that many Americans who arrive at Jerusalem are either lunatics or lose their mind thereafter.”
NUVO does articles- news?
ReplyDelete