State Senate approves abortion legislation

The Indiana Senate passed Senate Bill 3 Tuesday, allowing pharmacists to refuse to dispense or sell prescription medication that could possibly induce abortion or assist suicide, including birth control pills. The bill will now move into the House of Representatives for further consideration.\nIn a 30-18 vote, the Senate approved the previously deadlocked bill, authored by Sen. Jeff Drozda, R-Westfield. Drozda was in session and unavailable for comment.\nSen. Vi Simpson, D-Ellettsville, said in an Indiana General Assembly news release Thursday she hoped the debate over the bill would bring renewed awareness to the instability of women’s reproductive rights.\n“This is a reminder to young women who weren’t alive 40 years ago when birth control was unavailable not to take these rights for granted,” she said in the news release.\nPlanned Parenthood of Indiana spokesman Steve Carr said, however, that anyone supportive of women’s health care should be shocked.\n“This session, we were originally told, was on property taxes,” he said. “But the session was sidetracked into getting in the way of women and their access to reproductive health services.”\nCarr said 98 percent of American women are on birth control at some point in their lives.\n“Women should be able to purchase birth control from pharmacies without being subjected to lectures and opinions,” he said. “This bill would allow pharmacists to make decisions based on their personal beliefs, and that’s ridiculous.”\nEvery woman deserves the chance to prevent unwanted pregnancies, Carr said.\nIU junior Breanne Vassar, a pro-life advocate, says pharmacists have rights as well, however.\n“I would rather lose my job than possibly assist in the ending of a human life,” Vassar said. “I applaud those who have the courage to protect the often-overlooked preborn members of society, and I applaud the senators who stood up for those protectors.”\nSimpson said in the news release that Senate Bill 0003 was originally based on a South Dakota law passed in 2006, which banned nearly all forms of abortion in the state.\n“A group of lawmakers in (South Dakota) have filed a bill to do precisely what we’ve asked for here – to exclude contraceptives from the drugs that can be refused,” Simpson said in the news release. “South Dakota learned that this (type of legislation) won’t work.”\nAlso passed during the session was Senate Bill 146, requiring doctors to inform pregnant women considering abortions about the possibility of fetal pain. Sen. Patricia Miller, R-Indianapolis, is the sponsor of the bill, which passed without debate Tuesday.