NO MORE MURDER CHARGE FOR WOMEN IN LA. ABORTION BILL
Legislation to be overhauled with no criminal penalties
The sponsor of a bill that would have subjected Louisiana women to murder charges for having abortions abruptly pulled the proposal from debate Thursday night after House members voted 65-26 to totally revamp the legislation, eliminating the criminal penalties.
The controversial bill would have ventured farther against abortion than lawmakers’ efforts in any other state. It would have made women who end their pregnancies subject to criminal homicide prosecutions.
“This is a thorny political question, but we all know that it is actually very simple. Abortion is murder,” Rep. Danny McCormick, a Republican from Oil City, proclaimed as he opened debate. He noted that a majority of Louisiana lawmakers in the heavily Republican Legislature say they are anti-abortion, and briefly chided those abortion opponents who also oppose his bill. “We’re faltering and trying to explain it away.”
But McCormick’s measure had drawn increasingly strong opposition from many anti-abortion stalwarts. Gov. John Bel Edwards, an antiabortion Democrat, said he would veto it. Louisiana Right to Life, the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops,
and the National Right to Life Committee were among the prominent antiabortion opponents of the measure.
Edwards, a devout Catholic, declared prosecuting women for abortion “absurd.”
McCormick had just as strongly disagreed, saying a woman who has an abortion should be in the same legal position as a woman who takes the life of a child after birth. “When I give equal protection to the unborn, that’s the possibility,” he said in a Wednesday evening phone interview.
Supporters of the bill were adamant. Scores of them gathered at the Capitol to pray and show support. As the group watched from the House balcony as the bill was pulled, one shouted “Shame.”
The House had not yet started debating the controversial legislation when the building was temporarily evacuated Thursday after the speaker interrupted proceedings and said an unknown, unclaimed package had been found in the capitol’s Memorial Hall — a gathering area between House and Senate Chambers.
It came on a day when legislation was already moving slowly as lawmakers tried to find a compromise on McCormick’s bill. The House recessed for more than an hour while lawmakers broke into groups behind closed doors to discuss the legislation.