A bill calling for an almost-total ban on abortion passed the Indiana state legislature and was signed into law. This makes Indiana the first state to ban abortion since the overturning of Roe, and of course it’s Indiana.
Seems to me that doctors might be looking elsewhere too.
Indiana, notably, is the state to which the 10-year-old Ohio rape victim came to when she needed to get an abortion which just barely qualified as illegal under Ohio’s current six-week ban.
To nitpick-Indiana politicians overwhelmingly ban abortion. The people were not given a vote.
I am sure that if the citizens were allowed to vote, they would vote “NO!”
Really. As much as Indiana pisses me off, this was no referendum.
(OK, the people of Indiana put these bastards in office in the first place…)
Iowa (et al IIRC) had a law on the books that if Roe v Wade were ever overturned that abortions were immediately illegal. Why are they not first?
Iowa et. al. are examples of trigger laws. This is the first state to newly ban abortion after the overturn.
Indeed, in the very session when the politicians in Indianapolis voted in this despicable new law they voted AGAINST a state wide referendum on the matter. Clearly, the anti-abortion crowd do not want a repeat of Kansas and they certainly do not democracy (the actual will of the actual people) to prevail.
Yeah, a lot of red states are about to figure out very painfully that you can’t actually provide adequate gynecological/obstetric healthcare without letting patients and doctors be the ones to decide about the use of various procedures that some politicians somewhere consider to be “abortion”.
If those states cared about that, they wouldn’t have done this to begin with.
As Jane Mayer recently explained, it’s not so much “those states” as a whole as the radical conservative minorities within them who have managed to entrench one-party rule to enact measures that significant majorities of the voters are opposed to.
Republicans can’t see the times are changing. For decades they’d pick up the votes of the 30% of people who wanted to ban abortion by proclaiming themselves to be pro-life but not actually delivering on the goods. As long as Roe stood, it got them easy votes with no consequences.
Now the 70% of the public that didn’t want Roe overturned has woken up. Still, Republicans think that they have to continue to deliver more for the anti-abortion crowd. State after state will make abortion everything from illegal to super-dee-dooper illegal. 10 year olds having to carry rapists’ babies will be the norm. This is going to piss off most women big time and they’re going to take it out on Republicans in November. I think McCarthy can kiss his dreams of wielding the gavel goodbye and Moscow Mitch can spend the rest of his reptilian days as minority leader.
The clear lesson for Republicans from Kansas and Indiana is to never let abortion restrictions on the ballot as an up-or-down vote. They’re going to lose that way. But when people are voting for their legislators, abortion is just one of many issues that they have to take into consideration.
I’m skeptical of a Roe backlash overcoming anxiety about the economy and the “midterm curse” fueling a Republican takeover, but I was surprised by the Kansas vote. Can that level of outrage and engagement be sustained for the next three months? We’ll find out!
Well, how many more cases of women’s lives being at risk of being destroyed in one fashion or another do you think there will be in the next three months? Every one of them will be a reminder of what’s at stake.
Update:
The board on Thursday found Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an obstetrician-gynecologist, liable on three counts of violating patient privacy laws after Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita filed a complaint against the doctor in November.
However, the board dismissed two other allegations in the complaint, determining she did not violate laws requiring physicians to immediately report suspected child abuse and keep abreast of mandatory reporting and patient privacy laws.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/26/us/dr-caitlin-bernard-indiana-medical-board-hearing/index.html