Divided House GOP maintains abortion bill exceptions
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Despite fierce opposition from the Republican Party’s right wing, the Indiana House on Thursday voted to keep a few narrow exceptions to a proposed abortion ban.
As with their Senate colleagues a week earlier, much of the lower house’s debate centered on whether to maintain an exception for victims of rape or incest, currently set at 10 weeks into their pregnancy.
Early in the afternoon’s debate, Rep. Karen Engleman, R-Georgetown, offered an amendment to remove the rape and incest exception. She and other backers of the amendment argued it is immoral to punish an unborn child for their father’s actions.
“Because the scientific evidence is exceedingly clear that a new, distinct human being comes into existence at the moment of fertilization, the intentional ending of a human life has no place in medical practice,” Engleman said.
Roughly half of the House GOP caucus joined with Democrats to defeat the amendment and maintain the exception. Rep. Rita Fleming, D-Jeffersonville, a former OB/GYN, said she had helped deliver babies conceived as a result of rape inflicted against very young girls.
“Imagine a child of 80 pounds having a 7-pound baby coming through her birth canal. The tears, the lacerations, the incontinence that can last for life,” said Fleming.
A similar vote margin defeated a proposal to remove the exception for fatal fetal abnormalities, a provision that got little discussion in the Senate. That proposal came from Rep. J. Michael Davisson, R-Salem, whose father, the late Rep. Steve Davisson, was born with a potentially fatal condition in 1957, which he survived.
One amendment that did pass, offered by bill sponsor Rep. Wendy McNamara, R-Evansville, modified the language surrounding abortions to save the mother’s life. Doctors now would be able to perform an abortion to prevent “any serious health risk” as well as to save the mother’s life.
The majority voted down Democratic-backed propsals to extend the deadline for rape and incest victims to 20 weeks, put the matter to voters in a non-binding referendum or require employers to provide employment protections for pregnant women. Lawmakers also defeated a proposal by retiring Batesville Republican Rep. Cindy Ziemke to allow elective abortions up to 13 weeks into pregnancy.
The House is scheduled to take up the measure for a final vote Friday morning. If it passes, it will have to go back to the Senate due to the extensive changes the House made in committee and on the floor.