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Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Ind. Gov't. - "Limits on abortion clear Senate: Bill cuts Planned Parenthood funds"

That is the headline of Niki Kelly's report today in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette on yesterday's Senate action on HB 1210. Some quotes:

The Indiana Senate voted 35-13 Tuesday to strip public funding from the largest abortion provider in Indiana and move the state toward being one of the most restrictive in the country.

“This bill does not change Roe v. Wade, but it does in my opinion help women,” said Sen. Patricia Miller, R-Indianapolis. “It gives women objective scientific information. It helps them to understand their options.”

House Bill 1210 now returns to the House, where the heavily Republican chamber is expected to approve changes made to the bill. * * *

The legislation also would make it illegal to get an abortion after the 20th week of pregnancy.

Current law makes it illegal at the point of viability, which doctors usually set about 24 weeks. Other provisions of the bill are:

• A physician must inform a pregnant woman considering an abortion that the fetus might feel pain, as well as other dangers of having an abortion or carrying a baby to term.

• A pregnant woman must view fetal ultrasound imaging, unless she declines in writing.

• Doctors providing abortions must have physician admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.

Most of the discussion on the bill, though, centered on funding.

“I just fear that we’re going to put our constituents in a situation where they possibly don’t have access to family planning and they will have to make these terrible decisions,” Sen. Tim Lanane, D-Anderson, said.

Here is yesterday's ILB entry on HB 1210. As Kelly's story points out: "[T]he vote was not strictly along party lines; four Republicans voted “no,” and three Democrats voted “yes.”" Here is the Roll Call.

The Indianapolis Star story by Heather Giller is here. Some quotes:

"It makes absolutely no sense to reduce access to birth control when the objective is to reduce the incidence of abortion," said Betty Cockrum, president of Planned Parenthood of Indiana.

Ending taxpayer funding would seriously jeopardize eight health centers that serve low-income Hoosiers across the state, Cockrum said. It also would keep Medicaid clients from visiting any of Planned Parenthood's 28 Indiana locations.

"We're sort of cutting off our nose to spite our face," said Sen. Tim Lanane, D-Anderson. "The most effective way to prevent unwanted pregnancies and to prevent a woman from having to make that horrible decision about whether to keep a child or not is access to family planning." * * *

Sue Swayze, legislative director of Indiana Right to Life * * * "You can buy some types of contraceptive devices at Walmart," she said.

ILB: It makes no sense, unless, as it appears, the war against abortion is in reality a war against contraception.

See also this article posted on Slate yesterday by Dahlia Litwich, titled "The Death of Roe v. Wade: Supporters and opponents of abortion seem to agree: It's no longer the law of the land." Some quotes to show what she is getting at:

Increasingly, however, there is a fundamental assumption both sides seem to share, even if they don't say so, and it may well shape the future of abortion rights in America: Opponents and supporters of abortion appear to have taken the position that Roe v. Wade is no longer the law of the land. * * *

Gone are the days in which legislatures at least attempted to ensure state regulations conformed to the broadest interpretation of the Roe constraints. The new game lies in expressly violating Roe and Casey, at the state level, in the hopes of either forcing the issue at the Supreme Court or making abortion unobtainable as a matter of fact. Either way, abortion opponents believe they will win—and here pro-abortion rights groups may actually agree. * * *

[T]he fear that Justice Samuel Alito would vote to overturn Roe is so deep that reproductive rights groups may be opting to leave the state bans in place. And, as she conceded in that interview, wherever unconstitutional state abortion bans go unchallenged, they become law. * * *

The end result is that Roe remains on the books, while for all practical purposes women can't get an abortion in Ohio, North Dakota, or Florida. * * *

There's one other (often forgotten) player in this elaborate game of chicken over reproductive rights, and that's the Supreme Court. Given that public opinion has changed virtually not at all since Roe v. Wade, my guess is still that the Roberts court is as uninterested in overturning the law as its challengers are in forcing the issue. It does not want to be the court that makes abortion illegal, or all-but-illegal, in America. The backlash would be staggering. The conservatives on the court are much happier with the status quo, allowing abortion as a matter of federal law while the states effectively outlaw it as a matter of fact. If the states continue to hollow out Roe from the core, there will be no reason for the court to hear an abortion case ever again. * * *

[If] fear of Samuel Alito is preventing anyone from challenging the host of increasingly invasive, paternalistic, and degrading state abortion regulations, it's not just abortion foes who are getting what they want. The court is, too. Abortion will have become all but impossible in America—for poor, minority, and rural women in particular—in direct contradiction to a Supreme Court decision, and the court itself will have done nothing to stand in the way. Is that what supporters of the right to abortion, not to mention the rule of law, really want?

Eric Bradner's story today in the Evansville Courier & Press concludes:
Senate Minority Leader Vi Simpson, D-Ellettsville, said she remembers the time before the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion.

Making the procedure illegal "didn't cut down on the number of them. Just moved them into somebody's garage," she said. "I guess that's what we want to go back to in Indiana."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 20, 2011 11:11 AM
Posted to Indiana Government