Rape, incest exceptions divide Indiana House Republicans
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — House Republicans on Monday gave News 8 a variety of answers as to whether they’d support the existing abortion ban bill.
When the Senate approved the proposed abortion ban in a rare Saturday afternoon vote, it barely got enough votes to leave the chamber. Senate Republicans split over whether to include an exception for cases of rape and incest. Eighteen Republicans voted last week in favor of removing the exception from the bill, while 18 more joined with all of the chamber’s Democrats in voting it down. Three of the Republicans who wanted to remove the rape and incest exception then voted against the final bill, as did five of the Republicans who voted to leave the language in.
House Republicans so far show signs of a similar split. Assistant Majority Whip Bruce Borders, a Republican from Jasonville, said the rape and incest exception “is where the greatest division is” and Republicans already planned to discuss the issue among themselves later Monday and throughout the week. Borders said he personally opposes exceptions for rape and incest but would still vote for the bill if the provision remains.
“Would I prefer to have it without those? Yes, absolutely, no question about it. But the bottom line is, I don’t want the perfect to be the enemy of the good,” he said.
Not all House Republicans share that view. Rep. John Jacob, a Republican from Indianapolis, who has long pushed for a ban on abortion without any exceptions, said he would not support a bill that, in his view, merely regulates abortion rather than outlawing it.
“Because murder is always the taking of an innocent human being’s life, and abortion always takes the life of an innocent human being, abortion, therefore, is always murder,” he said. “You do not regulate murder, you end it. You criminalize it.”
Still other members of the House Republican caucus want to leave the exceptions in. House Speaker Todd Huston, a Republican from Fishers, told reporters last week he was among that number.
When the bill was in the Senate, Democrats there introduced a series of amendments meant to, in their words, “make a bad bill better.” Rep. Matt Pierce, a Democrat from Bloomington, who serves on the House Committee on Courts and Criminal Code that will discuss the bill, said House Democrats might do something similar, though he was waiting to see what changes Republicans make in committee.
“First, we’ve got just the fundamental issue of whether or not women should have the right to control medical decisions over their own body, and that’s fundamental, and that’s pretty hard to amend around,” he said.
The House will take public testimony on the bill at 9 a.m. Tuesday. The hearing will happen in the House chamber.