Indiana Bans Safest Second-Term Abortion Method, Because They Just Really Love Life

Logic!

Oh, Indiana. The state what wrought Vice President Mike Pence and also this guy I met one time who told me I was the first "ethnic white" he'd ever met. It sure is a place! And it is a place that is going to be a very unsafe place to get a second-trimester abortion very soon.

On Wednesday evening, Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb signed two really bad anti-abortion measures into law, both of which will go into effect on July 1. The first, House Enrolled Act 1211, bans dilation and extraction abortions -- the safest abortion method for abortions after 13 weeks, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

 Wow! That sure seems like a counterintuitive thing for people who claim to love life so much to do! I would think they would think the safest method would be best! you might say, if you are but a naïve babe in the woods. But you would be very, very wrong. Because the pregnant person's life is not what matters here.

Why are they banning this method? Because, like pretty much all surgical procedures, it is easy to make it sound really gross:

House Enrolled Act 1211, which takes effect July 1, prohibits dilation and evacuation abortions, which the law calls "dismemberment abortion," except when a woman otherwise would suffer "substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function." [...]

But anti-abortion lawmakers claim the procedure is "barbaric" because it requires a doctor to use forceps, tongs, scissors or similar instruments to remove a fetus from a woman's uterus.

Yes. Pretty much all medical procedures sound extremely gross when explained like that. Are we gonna just start banning all of the surgery now? Oh no, you can't have a heart transplant because EW they use surgical instruments to do that instead of just beaming it into your body ever-so-neatly! 

The only real reason to enact this law is to restrict access to abortion. Because the hope is that if they outlaw the safest method of second-trimester abortions, pregnant people will just decide to have the baby instead. They actually want abortions to be less safe so that people will not have them.

Senate Enrolled Act 201, the other act signed into law by Eric Holcomb on Wednesday, expanded the state's "conscience-protection" law, allowing "nurses, pharmacists and physician assistants who are not directly employed by a hospital or health clinic" to opt out of participating in an abortion in some way or another or prescribing abortion medication. In other words, it allows them to not do their jobs and still get paid. Nice!

Perhaps, instead of enacting these stupid laws, people could just not apply for jobs that require them to do things they do not want to do, instead leaving them for others who will actually do the job? There are lots of jobs that one might morally object to doing, but most of us have the sense to not to go into professions that require us to do things that violate our personal beliefs in a very serious way. You don't see vegans working at steakhouses and then conscientiously objecting to selling customers any meat.

Thankfully, the Indiana ACLU is gearing up to fight both of the new laws in court.

The Indiana ACLU already has indicated that it will challenge the measure in court, a fight that the state attorney general's office has signaled it's eager to wage — despite repeatedly losing over the past decade in its attempts to defend Indiana laws restricting abortion.

Of course they're eager. With the makeup of the United States Supreme Court what it is, states like Indiana can't wait to put all of their horrifying anti-abortion laws to the test -- and it's hard to have much confidence that they won't win. And if they do, we here in Illinois are gonna need more of these signs.

[ NWI Times ]

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