No more wire hangers

DISGUSTING IGNORANCE
It’s a sad day for women.

The Indiana House voted to pass a bill that would further restrict abortion. Under the new provisions, abortion cannot occur after 20 weeks, women must be told by their doctors that the fetus can feel pain and must also be told that abortion has been linked to breast cancer.

Rep. Eric Turner, R-Cicero, said he hopes the bill will “make Indiana one of the most pro-life states in America.”

This, with the similar bill that the Indiana Senate recently passed, is a huge step backward for women’s rights.

Currently, Indiana law states that abortion must be done before viability, which is usually at about 24 weeks. Though only 1.1 percent of women have an abortion after the first 20 weeks, according to the Center for Disease Control, a further restriction of rights is a scary thing. Decades after Roe v. Wade, women’s right to have an abortion is still under attack.

The most demeaning part of this whole process is found in Turner’s comments on the bill. During a debate about whether insurance should cover abortions in the case of rape or incest, he claimed that women would fake being raped in order to have abortions covered.

The fact that he apologized for it later means nothing. The words came out of his mouth.

Obviously, no one Turner loves has ever been raped or attacked. He clearly has no concept of the horrors a woman faces during and after that violation. Those are emotional scars that remain for the rest of a woman’s life. It’s every woman’s nightmare.

How dare he say that a woman would falsely claim this horrible thing had happened?

Of everything that’s happened during this shameful process, this is the most demeaning toward women. It goes beyond incredibly insensitive. It seems obvious that Turner has an unbelievably low opinion of women; we can only hope that public outcry makes him re-evaluate his beliefs and maybe even spend some time volunteering at a shelter for abused women so he can see that rape isn’t funny. The act itself and the aftermath are damaging enough without uneducated people making false and hurtful claims toward an entire gender.

Since similar bills have cleared the House and Senate, we can only hope that Gov. Mitch Daniels has enough sense to veto it as it stands — or, if it comes to it, that the Indiana Supreme Court has more sense than the senators.

­— Sarah Hann, hanns@indiana.edu


FACTS THAT GET IN THE WAY
This past week, the Indiana House overwhelmingly passed House Bill 1210, the “abortion bill” that makes Indiana one of the strictest states in the nation in regards to abortion access. What’s most disturbing isn’t necessarily the abortion bill itself. A bigger issue is language in the bill that is simply not factual.

HB 1210 requires abortion providers to notify patients of the risks of abortion; one of the risks specifically mentioned is breast cancer. 

According to the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Cancer Society, to name only a few organizations, there is no link between abortion and breast cancer. Simply put, the rallying cry of so many pro-life advocates is false.

State Rep. Peggy Welch, D-Bloomington, attempted to remove the breast cancer language from the bill. Welch, a nurse and co-sponsor of the larger bill, said, “... I do not support the (breast cancer) language because it is not evidence-based.”

The message sent by lawmakers’ failure to strike the breast cancer language from the bill is clear: Indiana legislators are so entrenched in their personal beliefs that even scientific fact, as we know it now, cannot sway them.

At a time when improving health care quality and value is a bipartisan goal, this movement away from evidence-based care is troubling. It will be difficult to advance care for all Americans if the unwise actions of Indiana lawmakers are indicative of a larger, nationwide legislative trend.

­— Brendan Iglehart, biglehar@indiana.edu