INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Thousands of people discussing the issue of abortion surrounded the Indiana Statehouse and filled its corridors Monday as state lawmakers began considering a Republican proposal to ban nearly all abortions in the state and Vice President Kamala Harris denounced the effort during a meeting with Democratic lawmakers.
Harris said during a trip to Indianapolis that the proposed abortion ban reflects a health crisis in the country. Despite the bill’s abortion-ban language, anti-abortion activists lined up before a legislative committee to argue the bill was not strict enough and lacked enforcement teeth.
Indiana is one of the first Republican-led state legislatures to debate stricter abortion laws following the US Supreme Court’s decision last month that overturned Roe v. The Supreme Court’s ruling is expected to lead to abortion bans in about half of the states.
“Maybe some people need to really learn how a woman’s body works,” Harris said Monday, prompting murmurs and laughter from Democratic lawmakers. “The parameters that are being proposed mean that for the vast majority of women, when they realize they are pregnant, they will effectively be denied access to reproductive health care that allows them to choose what happens to their bodies.”
Clashes erupted periodically between anti-abortion and abortion-rights protesters around the Indiana Statute. A person carrying a message on a cardboard – “Forced birth is violence” – followed a man, who carried a fake red fetus in a plastic bag over his shoulder, and tried to hide his sign which read “Save our babies.”
Some people had virulent arguments surrounded by other protesters
“You think you should dictate my life and my children’s life. That’s what you’re saying,” Kait Schultz, who was wearing a dark gray “Pregnant and Angry” shirt, yelled at Christopher Monaghan.
“You don’t want to have a conversation,” Monaghan replied as they spoke over each other. He carried a vertical sign that read “Babies Live Matter.”
Elsewhere Monday, lawmakers in West Virginia’s Republican majority rushed to advance legislation that would criminalize abortion with few exceptions. A bill introduced Monday makes abortion a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. It only provides exceptions in cases where there is an ectopic pregnancy, a “medically non-viable fetus” or a medical emergency.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice suddenly added the state’s abortion law to the state Legislature’s agenda for a special session he called Monday to focus on his plan to reduce ‘income taxes.
In his announcement, Justice called on lawmakers to “clarify and modernize” state abortion laws in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling. A week ago, a Charleston judge blocked enforcement of the state’s 150-year-old abortion ban, saying recent laws enacted by the West Virginia Legislature “hopelessly conflict with the criminal prohibition of abortion”.
Meanwhile, in Tennessee, the attorney general’s office said it is still unknown when the state’s “active ban” on abortion will go into effect, but some state lawmakers are alarmed that the ban has no exceptions for victims of rape or incest.
Tennessee has been limiting abortion to six weeks into pregnancy, when most women don’t know they’re pregnant, since the U.S. Supreme Court’s abortion decision last month. Republican Gov. Bill Lee last week refused to answer reporters’ questions about whether he supported tweaking the trigger law, largely ignoring whether he supported exempting children who were raped and then became pregnant. .
In Wyoming, a lawsuit filed Monday by a women’s health clinic in Casper and others seeks 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 life-saving pregnancy health care in Wyoming, forcing pregnant women to go to other states for necessary procedures.
Republican Senate leaders in Indiana last week proposed a bill that would ban abortions from the moment an egg implants 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 firestorm over a 10-year-old rape victim who traveled to the state from neighboring Ohio to end her pregnancy.
“He’s a baby,” Democratic Rep. Cherrish Pryor of Indianapolis, one of the lawmakers at the meeting with Harris, said of the child. “Why should we force babies to have babies?”
The Ohio girl’s case drew widespread attention when an Indianapolis doctor said the child had to go to Indiana because Ohio banned abortions at the first detectable “fetal heartbeat” after the ruling Supreme Court abortion.
The final fate of Indiana’s abortion bill in the Republican-dominated Legislature is uncertain as Indiana right-to-life leaders, the state’s most prominent anti-abortion group, are denouncing the Senate’s proposal as weak and without implementation provisions.
Republican Senate leaders said the bill would not add new criminal penalties against doctors involved in abortions, but would potentially face having their medical licenses revoked for violating the law.
Numerous anti-abortion activists argued against including exceptions allowing abortion in cases of rape and incest.
“I don’t think children should be murdered based on the circumstance 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 they are protected from the violence of abortion or not.”
Republican Sen. Sue Glick, a sponsor of the abortion ban bill, said she expected amendments to tighten the exceptions to be considered before an early Senate vote on the proposal later this week.
Representatives of several physician groups expressed concern about the possibility that Indiana’s proposal would be challenged and prosecuted for its medical decisions.
Ariel Ream of Indianapolis said she was undergoing fertility treatments and worried that the abortion ban could put her health at risk if she miscarried and bled in the face.
“When am I bleeding enough to get care?” Ream said. “We don’t know if you go to the ER, this doctor will be scared enough to put his license in jeopardy.”
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Arleigh Rodgers is a staff member of the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a national nonprofit service program that places reporters in local newsrooms to report on undercover issues. Follow Arleigh Rodgers on Twitter at