INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Thousands of people arguing over the issue of abortion surrounded the Indiana Statehouse and filled its hallways Monday as state lawmakers began considering a Republican proposal to ban nearly all abortions in the state and Vice President Kamala Harris denounced efforts to time to meet with Democratic lawmakers.
Harris said during a trip to Indianapolis that the abortion ban proposal reflects the nation’s health care crisis. Despite the bill’s pro-abortion wording, anti-abortion activists lined up before a legislative committee to argue the bill was not strict enough and lacked enforcement powers.
Indiana is one of the first Republican-controlled state legislatures to discuss tougher abortion laws since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last month overturned Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court decision is expected to result in abortion bans in roughly half of the states.
“Maybe some people really need to learn how the female body works,” Harris said Monday, prompting murmurs and laughter from Democratic lawmakers. “The proposed parameters mean that for the vast majority of women, by the time they realize they are pregnant, she will effectively be denied access to reproductive health care that would allow her to choose what happens to her body.”
Confrontations between anti-abortion and pro-abortion rights demonstrators erupted periodically around the Indiana Statehouse. One person carrying a message on cardboard – “Forced birth is violence” – followed a man who carried a fake red fruit in a plastic bag over his shoulder and tried to hide his sign, which read “Save our babies”.
Some people had heated arguments surrounded by other demonstrators
“You think you should dictate my life and the lives of my children. That’s what you say,’ shouted Kate Schultz, who was wearing a dark gray ‘Pregnant and Angry’ t-shirt by Christopher Monaghan.
“You don’t want to have a conversation,” Monahan replied as they spoke over each other. He held a vertical sign reading “Babies’ Lives Matter.”
Elsewhere on Monday, West Virginia’s Republican-majority lawmakers rushed to push through legislation that would criminalize abortion with few exceptions. The bill introduced Monday makes performing an abortion a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. It provides exceptions only in cases where there is an ectopic pregnancy, a “medically non-viable fetus” or a medical emergency.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice abruptly added the state’s abortion law to the state Legislature’s agenda for a special session he called for Monday to focus on his income tax cut plan.
In his announcement, Justice asked lawmakers to “clarify and modernize” state abortion laws in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision. A week ago, a Charleston judge blocked enforcement of the state’s 150-year-old abortion ban, saying laws recently passed by the West Virginia Legislature were “hopelessly inconsistent with the criminal abortion ban.”
Meanwhile, in Tennessee, the attorney general’s office said it is not yet known when the state’s “trigger abortion ban” will go into effect, but some state lawmakers are raising concerns that the ban has no exceptions for victims of rape or incest.
Tennessee has restricted abortions as early as the sixth week of pregnancy — when most women don’t know they’re pregnant — since the U.S. Supreme Court’s abortion ruling last month. Republican Gov. Bill Lee declined last week to answer questions from reporters about his support for changing the trigger law, specifically skirting whether he supports releasing children who have been raped and then become pregnant.
In Wyoming, a lawsuit filed Monday by Casper Women’s Health Clinic and others is trying to block the state’s new abortion ban just before it takes effect. The lawsuit claims the new law violates the state constitution with restrictions that will discourage potentially life-saving pregnancy health care in Wyoming, forcing pregnant women to go to other states for necessary procedures.
Republican leaders in the Indiana Senate proposed a bill last week that would ban abortions from the moment an egg is implanted in a woman’s uterus, with limited exceptions — in cases of rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother. The proposal followed the political storm surrounding a 10-year-old rape victim who traveled to the state from neighboring Ohio to terminate her pregnancy.
“She’s a baby,” Democrat Cherish Pryor of Indianapolis, one of the lawmakers at the meeting with Harris, said of the child. “Why do we have to force babies to have babies?”
The Ohio girl’s case drew a lot of attention when an Indianapolis doctor said the child had to go to Indiana because Ohio banned abortions at the first detected “fetal heartbeat” after the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling.
The ultimate fate of Indiana’s abortion bill in the Republican-dominated Legislature is uncertain as leaders of Indiana Right to Life, the state’s most prominent anti-abortion group, denounce the Senate proposal as weak and lacking implementing provisions.
Senate Republican leaders have said the bill would not add new criminal penalties against doctors involved in abortions, but they would face possible revocation of their medical licenses for violating the law.
Many anti-abortion activists opposed the inclusion of exceptions allowing abortions in cases of rape and incest.
“I do not believe that children should be killed based on the circumstances of their conception,” Emma Duell of Noblesville told the Senate committee. “What happened the night they were conceived, something over which they have no control, should not affect whether or not they are protected from abortion violence.”
Republican Sen. Sue Glick, the sponsor of the abortion bill, said she expects amendments to be considered to tighten the exemptions before an expected Senate vote on the proposal later this week.
Representatives of several physician groups have expressed concern about the possibility that Indiana’s proposal could be questioned and prosecuted for their medical decisions.
Ariel Ream of Indianapolis said she was undergoing infertility treatment and worried that the abortion ban could put her health at risk if she miscarried and bled.
“When do I bleed enough that I can get care?” Reim said. “We don’t know if you go to the emergency room, that doctor will be scared enough to put his license on the line for me.”
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Arlie Rogers is a corps member of the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. America Report is a national nonprofit program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercover issues. Follow Arlie Rogers on Twitter at
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