INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris said a proposal from Indiana Republicans to ban nearly all abortions in the state reflects a health care crisis in the country and she met Monday with Democratic state legislators on the first day of a contentious special legislative session on the issue.
Harris traveled to Indianapolis as several thousand people on both sides of the issue filled Statehouse corridors and lined sidewalks surrounding the building as a state Senate committee was set to begin hearing testimony on the Republican-sponsored proposal.
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 be prohibited from having access to reproductive health care that will allow her to choose what will happen to her life.”
Indiana House Democratic Leader Phil GiaQuinta said the proposed ban would have “drastic consequences for women, especially for women of color and low-income women, who are already disproportionately impacted by getting adequate health care access.”
Indiana’s Republican Senate leaders proposed a bill last week that would prohibit abortions from the time an egg is implanted in a woman’s uterus with limited exceptions — in cases of rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother. The proposal followed the political firestorm over a 10-year-old rape victim who traveled to the state from neighboring Ohio to end her pregnancy.
“She is a baby,” Democratic Rep. Cherrish Pryor of Indianapolis, one of the lawmakers at the meeting with Harris, said of the child. “Why should we force babies to have babies?”
The case of the Ohio girl gained wide attention when an Indianapolis doctor said the child had to go to Indiana because Ohio banned abortions at the first detectable “fetal heartbeat” after the Supreme Court’s abortion decision.
The ultimate fate of the Indiana abortion bill in the Republican-dominated Legislature is uncertain, as leaders of Indiana Right to Life, the state’s most prominent anti-abortion group, are decrying the Senate proposal as weak and lacking enforcement provisions.
Republican Senate leaders said the bill would not add new criminal penalties against doctors involved with abortions, but they would face possibly having their medical licenses revoked for breaking the law.
3 comments
Its ok everyone, Kamala is here!!! She will save the day. The most unpopular Vice President in modern history is now Giving Speeches about killing unborn babies. The Democrat party of death is at it again….I can’t wait to hear her speech, I’m still a little hungry and could go for a salad.
I can’t believe she is getting paid by tax payers to campaign against States Rights. Mind your own business and go Fix OUR Southern Border you loser!!!
That’s hilarious, a Democrat saying how a woman’s body works. When they can’t say publicly what makes you a man or woman.
Former Soviet leader Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev promised that the United States would collapse from the inside. He was correct. People like Kommie Harris are the major vehicles., There is no federal right to Abortion. We have been living under a lie for the last 50 years at the cost of over 60 million natural born American citizens. Therefore there are not enough citizen workers. The RINO idea that we need open borders to supply workers is just one more evil scheme to destroy this country. There are however 18 enumerated powers of Congress in Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution. Go read them and ask yourself if the vast federal government isn’t a bit beyond those powers. All other powers not delegated to the feds are reserved to the States or The People by the 10th Amendment of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights doesn’t state the rights of the government but the Rights of THE PEOPLE! Kommie Harris is an abysmal individual who should not have a single lever of power. As VP she has no power. She can;t even make a simple speech without turning into a Waldorf word salad. Dopey King Xo the Idiot of Brandonville has an excuse. He is riddled with senility. What is the Kommie’s excuse? We brought this on our selves because many didn’t like mean tweets directed at very mean people. You know who you are…………..