Indiana Protects Unborned Babies From Their Racist Sexist Mommies

Gov. Mike Pence

Indiana ladies, have you been feeling neglected and unloved? You see governors and legislatures putting the screws to your sisters in other states, and you probably wonder where the heck is your edible fruit basket of legislative love, don't you? You know you do. Not to worry, girls, Republican Gov. Mike Pence and his GOP bros have rectified that so open up and say "Ahhhh!" to this wootastic golden shower of attention:  

Indiana’s governor signed a bill on Thursday that adds broad limits to women’s access to abortions, banning those motivated solely by the mother’s objection to the fetus’s race, gender or disability, and placing new restrictions on doctors.

But wait, you're thinking right now because you're smart like that, doesn't Indiana already have all the abortion restrictions? Yes, yes it does:  

• A woman must receive state-directed counseling that includes information designed to discourage her from having an abortion and then wait 18 hours before procedure is provided. Counseling must be provided in person and must take place before the waiting period begins, thereby necessitating two separate trips to the facility.

• Abortion is covered in private insurance policies only in cases of life endangerment, rape, incest or if the woman's health is severely compromised unless an optional rider is purchased at an additional cost.

• Health plans that will be offered in the state’s health exchange under the Affordable Care Act can only cover abortion in cases when the woman's life is endangered, her health is severely compromised, rape or incest.

• Abortion is covered in insurance policies for public employees only in cases of life endangerment, rape or incest or when her heath is severely compromised.

• The use of telemedicine for the performance of medication abortion is prohibited.

• The parent of a minor must consent before an abortion is provided.

• Public funding is available for abortion only in cases of life endangerment, physical health, rape or incest.

• A woman must undergo an ultrasound before obtaining an abortion; the provider must offer her the option to view the image.

• An abortion may be performed at or after 20 weeks postfertilization (22 weeks after the woman’s last menstrual period) only if the woman’s life or physical health is endangered, based on the spurious assertion that a fetus can feel pain at that point.

But danged if Pence and pals haven't invented some new reasons -- that are, fun fact, not real reasons -- to further restrict abortion. Sorry if you want to kill your baby because she is a black girl-baby of Irish descent and you are racist against girls and sexist against black Irishes, but that's how much Pence loves the least among us, inside of our wombs:

The bill, he said in his signing statement, “will ensure the dignified final treatment of the unborn and prohibits abortions that are based only on the unborn child’s sex, race, color, national origin, ancestry or disability, including Down syndrome.”

[contextly_sidebar id="STrPl9ecRNF3aU0pqtexnDuMsUj1fzLv"]The only question for Pence is whether it's OK to kill your baby if it is a gay-fetus baby. We figure he'd probably be just dandy with that, since it was almost precisely a year ago that he signed a bill protecting the religious right to discriminate against gaysexuals. When the rest of America pulled down its pants to take a dump on Pence's head, he had some second thoughts about it, sort of, and claimed he didn't mean to look like a raging bigot; he's just an idiot, is all, who had no idea what he was doing.

Maybe that's what he should say about this new law too. It's far more believable.

[ NYT / Guttmacher Institute ]