Abortion debate draws protest crowds, along with VP Harris
INDIANAPOLIS >> Thousands of people arguing the abortion issue surrounded the Indiana Statehouse and filled its corridors Monday as state lawmakers began consideration of a Republican proposal to ban nearly all abortions in the state and Vice President Kamala Harris denounced the effort during a meeting with Democratic legislators.
Harris said during a trip to Indianapolis that the abortion ban proposal reflects a health care crisis in the country. Despite the bill's abortion ban language, anti-abortion activists lined up before a legislative committee to argue that the bill wasn't strict enough and lacked enforcement teeth.
Indiana is one of the first Republican-run state legislatures to debate tighter abortion laws following the U.S. Supreme Court decision last month overturning Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court ruling is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states.
“Maybe some people need to actually learn how a woman's body works,” Harris said Monday, eliciting murmurs and laughs from the Democratic legislators. “The parameters that are being proposed mean that for the vast majority of women, by the time she realizes she is pregnant, she will effectively be prohibited from having access to reproductive health care that will allow her to choose what happens to her body.”
Elsewhere Monday, Lawmakers in West Virginia's Republican majority hurried to advance legislation that would criminalize abortion with few exceptions. A bill introduced Monday makes providing an abortion a felony carrying up to 10 years in prison. It provides exceptions only in cases where there is an ectopic pregnancy, a “non-medically viable fetus” or a medical emergency.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice abruptly added state abortion law to the state's Legislature's agenda for a special session he called for Monday to focus on his income tax cut plan.
In his announcement, Justice asked legislators to “clarify and modernize” the state abortion laws in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. A week ago, a Charleston judge blocked enforcement of the state's 150-year-old abortion ban, saying the recent laws enacted by the West Virginia Legislature “hopelessly conflict with the criminal abortion ban.”
In Tennessee, meanwhile, the attorney general's office said it's still unknown when the state's anti-abortion “trigger ban” will go into effect, but some state lawmakers are raising alarm that the ban has no exceptions for victims of rape or incest.