HB 1080 and HB 1172 were up for second reading today. (Second reading is the stage at which floor amendments (as opposed to committee amendments) for a bill are proposed or considered.)
House Bill 1080 is a bill that provides meticulous specifications for any building used to perform abortions. This appears to be an attempt to make sure that few or no facilities are available to women who want to exercise their reproductive rights because it’s too difficult or too expensive to come up with a building that meets the standards. (Presumably, the legislature could change the building requirements year after year to make it that much harder.)
Representative Kuzman proposed an amendment that would give the State Department of Health the authority to regulate “pregnancy counseling centers.” My understanding is that this is the name given to places where the goal is to put pressure on a woman to keep the child and not to have an abortion.
Representative Orentlicher proposed an amendment that would have imposed the meticulous requirements of HB 1080 on all ambulatory outpatient surgical centers and not just on abortion clinics.
Both of these amendments failed on a voice vote. This goes to show that proponents of HB 1080 aren’t concerned about the quality of women’s reproductive choices generally or the health and safety of outpatient surgical centers generally, they just want the government to tell women that they aren’t allowed to make this decision for themselves.
And, most amusingly to me, Rep. Porter’s amendment which would have required that sex and education information (already mandated by state law) on abstinence and other issues be medically accurate. This insistence on medical accuracy was ruled “out of order.” (It probably was out of order, given that HB 1080 deals with building regulations whereas Rep. Porter’s amendment had to do with educational issues. However, given the recent ruling that the anti-gay rights amendment was germane to the eminent domain bill, I thought the bar had been lowered.)
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The House also considered amendments to HB 1172 which is a bill that tells physicians what to tell their patients with respect to abortion. A physician must tell his or her patient that human life begins at conception. He must also tell her that her fetus may feel pain. (More discussion of HB 1172 here.).
Rep. Kuzman proposed one amendment that would have omitted the requirement to advise women about potential fetal pain in the case of incest or rape, and another amendment that would have permitted the physician to additionally provide his or her patient with the physician’s own professional medical opinion concerning the capacity of a fetus to experience pain, the advisability of administering anesthetic to a woman or fetus, and when human life begins. Both amendments were defeated by a voice vote.
Rep. Troy “I’ll never vote for Daylight Saving Time” Woodruff withdrew his amendment which would have inserted a section stating simply “Human life begins when a human ovum is fertilized by a human sperm.”
wait, wait..you don’t have to tell the woman the fetus “may” feel pain if you’ve been raped? What kind of freak-ass schizophrenia is that? The failure of all of these reinforces that the goal is to make abortion de facto illegal. And it’s not like there’s a rush on abortions in Indiana to begin with, nor are there practitioners who will perform one on every street corner. It’s all about making it impossible to get, which is pretty much going beyond the “undue burden” standard of restrictiveness. But who asked me, I have a uterus.
They’ve been trying to get medical accuracy in abstinence education for years now. No one is buying it, primarily because there’s no science behind abstinence education to begin with. (As an aside, did Rep. Porter say “I’m out of order? You’re out of order! This whole chamber is out of order!” Because that would have been priceless. I would have paid cash money.)
ah, never mind. I see what Kuzman was doing. (Oh, and sorry about the salty language there; occasionally I forget I’m not in my own backyard when I’m out on the internets.)
I do agree, I see no reason incest or rape should change a procedure. However, I feel that law is flawed in concept anyhow. Regardless of my own feelings, laws should not attempt to force personal moralty. Don’t pass no-smoking laws to reduce smoking. Pass them to protect employees from 2nd hand smoke. Don’t make complex building codes to reduce abortion. Building and saftey codes should be used only for that purpose.
Sure, I would support a law banning abortion. However, taking immoral tactics to try to get a end result you feel is moral is not right at all.
A show I watch had a good line last week: “It is hard to find the high ground when everyone is standing in the mud.”
I agree with what you said Jason. I come from the other side of the fence, believing that government should not prohibit abortion. But, if that’s the policy that is going to be imposed, come at it directly.
“It is hard to find the high ground when everyone is standing in the mud.â€
Reminds me of one of my favorites: “Don’t wrestle with pigs — you’ll get dirty, and the pig will enjoy it.”
And, just as long as I’m quoting — I heard a good one from Bruce Cockburn “Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight —
Got to kick at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight.”
You know, if men could get pregnant, there’d be drive-thru abortion clinics on every corner with beer on tap and TVs with ESPN in every corner.
This is just “the man” trying to keep women down.
This is the new Conservative strategy. If you dont like something, dont outlaw it,because you’d have to account for that, but legislate so many restrictions ,it wont function as orginally intended( ex: abortion) BUT if you really some program or legislation then take away ALL restrictions so everyone can get a piece of the action. Ex: (lobbying)
This isn’t about abortion. This is about choice. And who is the government to say whether or not a woman has a CHOICE over her body. It’s HER body. and hers alone. Until you are in the position, you may think that it is an easy choice, but it’s not. It is a hard CHOICE to make, but it’s still a choice. And nobody can take that away.