The Indiana House has approved one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, but not after a bizarre debate led by sponsor state Rep. Eric Turner (R). When Democratic legislators asked for an exception for rape and incest, Turner cried foul and warned that women would just fake rapes to get some of those free abortions. The Indiana House agreed and rejected the amendment.
State Rep. Gail Riecken (D) introduced an amendment to exempt “women who became pregnant due to rape or incest, or women for whom pregnancy threatens their life or could cause serious and irreversible physical harm.”
In the video below, Turner stepped forward to warn of legions of false rape victims clamoring for free abortions:
Turner then stepped to the podium and insisted that Riecken’s amendment would create a “giant loophole” for women. That loophole? Women “could simply say they’ve been raped”:
With all do respect to Rep. Riecken, I understand what she’s trying to do. But as you know that when the federal health care bill was going through Congress there was a lot of discussion whether this would allow for abortion coverage and of course we were all told it would not. And the bill, my house bill 1210, would prevent that for any insurance company to provide abortion coverage under federal health care bill. This [amendment] would open that window and I would ask you to oppose this amendment.
I just want you to think about this, in my view, giant loophole that could be created where someone who could — now i want to be careful, I don’t want to disparage in any way someone who has gone through the experience of a rape or incest — but someone who is desirous of an abortion could simply say that they’ve been raped or there’s incest.
The House voted down Riecken’s amendment 42 to 54. There appeared to be little consideration of the fact that it is a crime to falsely allege a crime.
Source: Think Progress and found first on Reddit.
Jonathan Turley
emw1,
Many thanks for clarifying … just wanted to make sure 🙂
I’ve been trying to “clean up” the language but news like this ticks me off – the f-bombs help get the anger out …
Stamford Liberal,
No, I am not patronizing you. I loved your sentiments, because I feel the same way, but you put it way better than I ever could, with a lot less swearing than I would use.
Her baby wasn’t expected to live, but Nebraska law banned abortion
10:39 PM, Mar. 5, 2011
Law didn’t allow couple to end pregnancy: Danielle and Robb Deaver knew their baby had little chance of survival, but Nebraska law prevented them from having the choice to end the pregnancy.
Written by
JASON CLAYWORTH
jclayworth@dmreg.com Danielle Deaver cradled her daughter, knowing the newborn’s gasps would slowly subside, and the baby would die.
Through tear-blurred eyes, she looked her daughter over for physical defects.
Deaver, 34, of Grand Island, Neb., wanted to see something, anything to validate the news doctors delivered eight days before: Her baby had virtually no chance of survival. And if she lived, she would be severely disabled.
What Deaver saw was perfection: A tiny but beautiful child. Ten toes. Ten fingers. Long eyelashes.
Her baby tried desperately to inhale.
With her husband, Robb, at her side, Deaver sobbed, gently kissing her daughter’s forehead and hoping her baby wasn’t in pain. That fear – that the baby would suffer before its predestined death – compelled the couple to seek an abortion. But a new Nebraska law that limits abortion after the 20th week of gestation prevented her from getting one. The Iowa Legislature is considering a similar law.
A nurse at Mary Lanning Memorial Hospital in Hastings instructed the couple to closely monitor their daughter’s breathing so when it stopped the staff could accurately record the death.
The clock ticked.
At 3:15 p.m. Dec. 8, 1-pound, 10-ounce Elizabeth Deaver – named in memory of Robb’s grandmother – made one final attempt to breathe.
Her life struggle, 15 minutes outside the womb after 23 weeks and five days of gestation, was over.
“Our hands were tied,” Danielle Deaver said. “The outcome of my pregnancy, that choice was made by God. I feel like how to handle the end of my pregnancy, that choice should have been mine, and it wasn’t because of a law.”
Years of trying to conceive
The Deavers’ path to the Hastings hospital is a story of faith and persistence in their desire to have children.
Danielle and Robb met in 2002 at a karaoke bar in Grand Island, Neb. Danielle attempted to set up Robb with one of her friends. But Robb, the son of rural Nebraska dairy farmers, was attracted to the bubbly matchmaker instead.
They dated for about a year and talked almost immediately about having children. She was 27 and he was 33 when they married.
“Conversations that would scare most people away, we chose to have because we weren’t 20,” Danielle said.
They married in a Methodist church in St. Paul, Neb., a compromise between his family’s Presbyterian roots and her Episcopalian denomination.
Soon after the wedding, they began trying to have children. Three pregnancies ended in miscarriages.
One was particularly devastating. The pregnancy was progressing so well that a doctor told them to go home and paint their baby room: They were going to be parents. She miscarried after the 16th week.
In 2007, when Danielle became pregnant again, Robb, a hospital emergency room admissions staffer, felt an intuition that everything would be OK this time.
Danielle, a registered nurse, felt anxiety the entire pregnancy, fearful that even a cough or hiccup would cause her to miscarry. But on May 18, 2008, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Alex.
Danielle Deaver calls all children, and specifically Alex, her active 2-year-old, “God’s greatest gift.”
“It’s everything I had hoped and dreamed it would be and more,” Robb Deaver said.
Joy turns to devastation
In June 2010, Robb and Danielle began trying to have another child. Danielle found out in August she was pregnant.
After telling immediate family, the couple took a picture of Alex in his blue booster seat with a poster reading “FUTURE BIG BROTHER” and posted it on Facebook.
“I was the one this time that was like, ‘Hey, I’ve done this once. I’m a pro,’ ” Danielle said. “I didn’t worry about anything.”
Then came Sunday, Nov. 28, as Danielle and Robb were tucking Alex into bed. Danielle’s water broke.
Robb rushed his wife to the hospital. Doctors told the couple the incident didn’t mean the pregnancy was over. It was possible Danielle’s body could make more amniotic fluid, and the baby would be all right.
“I said, ‘OK, what do we need to do? Do I need to stand on my head for the next four months? Whatever it is I need to do,’ ” Danielle said.
But the next morning, an ultrasound showed hardly any amniotic fluid around the baby. Danielle spent the next 24 hours on bed rest, scared to move. She saw a perinatologist in Omaha on Tuesday, Nov. 30.
A perinatologist is an obstetrical specialist often involved in caring for pregnancies that have a high risk for complications. The Deavers’ hearts sank when they heard the perinatologist’s first words: about hope for subsequent pregnancies.
Danielle had suffered anhydramnios, a premature rupture of the membranes before a fetus has achieved viability.
Without amniotic fluid around the fetus, the infant would likely be born with contractures, a shortening of muscle tissue that causes an inability to move limbs. Because the skull of the fetus was still soft, the muscles in the mother’s uterus would likely cause deformities to its face and head. It also was unlikely the baby’s lungs would develop beyond the 22-week stage, when Danielle’s water broke.
“Even if we did carry the pregnancy further, and we decided to try heroic measures with ventilation and stuff, she may not even have the anatomy to maintain” life, Danielle said. “You have to have the anatomy to have the ventilator help.”
The couple talked about bed rest, fluid replacement, steroids and any other idea they could imagine to save the pregnancy.
“I’ve said through this ordeal that I don’t want to be a person that doesn’t believe in miracles, but I think that day my hope was gone. I had none left,” Danielle said.
They asked the perinatologist a question no parent wants to ask: At what point do parents who are willing to do anything to save a child turn selfish by putting the child through what seemed to them like torture?
There was no clear-cut answer.
There was less than a 10 percent chance their child would have a heartbeat and be able to breathe on its own. There was an even smaller chance – estimated at 2 percent – that the baby would ultimately be able to perform the most basic functions on its own, such as eating.
Robb and Danielle, left alone in an exam room, held each other and discussed what to do. They just couldn’t see the logic in exhausting painful, expensive medical procedures after being told they had almost no chance to save their baby’s life.
They decided: There are worse things than death.
“So (the perinatologist) came in, and we said we’d just like to put an end to this nightmare and can you help us. She said, no, she can’t,” Danielle said.
The perinatologist said Nebraska’s abortion law, which had been in effect less than two months, would not allow Danielle to terminate her pregnancy because her baby still had a heartbeat and because her own life was not immediately jeopardized.
The couple went home to wait, brokenhearted. They acknowledge they could probably have gone to another state to terminate the pregnancy. Danielle said she felt intense stress and wasn’t strong enough emotionally to deal with an unfamiliar place and doctors she hadn’t met.
Eight days later, Danielle went into contractions, and baby Elizabeth was born to her 15-minute life.
Doctor acted on legal advice
Danielle Deaver gave The Des Moines Register permission to review her medical records, which confirmed her account of the pregnancy.
Dr. Todd Pankcatz, her primary physician in Hastings, said he asked several attorneys to review the law to see whether he could fulfill the family’s request to terminate the pregnancy.
It was possible that Danielle, who complained of intense pain during the last few days before birth, could have been suffering from an infection. However, it is debatable whether the possibility of an infection could have been used as the legal basis to move forward with an abortion, Pankcatz said.
Because of the uncertainty, Pankcatz said he was advised not to fulfill the family’s request.
“This is an untested case law,” Pankcatz said. A case could be pressed as a way to contest current abortion law, or “if somebody saw this in a way that could potentially further their political career,” his lawyers told him.
“There were criminal charges that I would potentially face by intervening in a pregnancy like this,” Pankcatz said.
Physicians who break the law face felony charges that could result in five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Leanne Parker, Danielle’s mother, arrived at the hospital soon after Elizabeth, her first granddaughter, died. She held the infant’s body while saying goodbye to the child she never knew.
“So many of these people that are behind this law have never gone through anything like what our family has gone through,” Parker said. “It’s just an unreasonable law.”
Abortion limits in Iowa
Iowa Republican lawmakers have proposed several bills to further restrict abortion in Iowa. House File 5 mirrors the Nebraska law.
One of the most aggressive anti-abortion legislators who supports House File 5, Rep. Glen Massie, R-Des Moines, said Elizabeth Deaver deserved the chance that Nebraska’s law gave her.
“In life, amazing things happen,” Massie said, noting examples of when unborn children have beaten the odds of a dire medical prognosis. “I know it may be a one in a bazillion snowballs’ chance, but if I were that snowball, I’d want that chance.”
Other anti-abortion lawmakers agreed that Deaver’s doctor acted appropriately to maintain the pregnancy.
“You have to take into account the life of the child and the life of the mother,” said Rep. Matt Windschitl, R-Missouri Valley, a board member of Iowa Right to Life and author of House File 5. “It’s that basic foundation. You have two lives there.”
The author of the Nebraska law, Speaker Mike Flood, a Republican and attorney from Norfolk, maintained last week that the law worked in the Deavers’ case.
“Even in these situations where the baby has a terminal condition or there’s not much chance of surviving outside of the womb, my point has been and remains that is still a life,” Flood said.
Consider impact, pair pleads
Danielle and Robb Deaver describe themselves as private people who have never been politically active. Before December, they weren’t aware of the Nebraska abortion law, they said.
Their interview with the Register was the first time they’d spoken publicly about their daughter’s death.
Politicians “put words out there like the ‘partial birth abortion act.’ Well, gosh, nobody wants a partial-birth abortion,” Danielle said. “That sounds so gruesome, but that’s not what this was about. Our situation got lumped in with that.”
The Deavers have contacted Planned Parenthood of the Heartland but have not determined whether they will pursue a case to challenge the constitutionality of the Nebraska law. Because Planned Parenthood does not provide abortions after the 20th week, it would not likely have legal standing to bring a case. Because the Deavers’ situation is resolved, they may no longer have standing either.
For now, the Deavers say speaking out is a form of therapy. It’s also a way to push states like Iowa to consider the ramifications of a broadly written law like Nebraska’s.
Jill June, president of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, called the Deavers courageous.
“I think those that hear her story will be very, very moved,” June said. “Hopefully some of them that are on this reckless stampede against a woman’s right to decide with her doctor what is in the best interest of her health and well being – I hope they will hear her words and listen to her.”
The three-month anniversary of Elizabeth’s birth and death is Tuesday. Her cremated remains are in an urn in the family’s house, next to pictures and other mementos of her life.
“I get so frustrated. I just think if they (lawmakers) thought about their daughter, their sister, their mother, their wife being in this situation, they would never want them to go through that,” Danielle Deaver said.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110306/NEWS10/103060331/Her-baby-wasn-t-expected-live-Nebraska-law-banned-abortion
Some of these rabid right-wingers are taking their anti-abortion/anti-women cause to other countries. Read on…
*****
Chris Smith’s African Abortion Adventure
The New Jersey Republican spent part of last week meddling in Kenya’s abortion politics—and taxpayers footed the bill.
— By Kate Sheppard
Mother Jones, 3/30/2011
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/chris-smith-kenya-abortion-constitution
Excerpt:
Most members of Congress spent last week’s recess back in their districts, talking to their constituents and getting a sense of what Americans want their elected officials to be doing back in Washington. But Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, had other plans: He spent part of the break on a taxpayer-funded trip to Kenya, where he slammed the country’s new constitution for allowing abortions in cases when the health of the mother is at risk.
Kenyan abortion restrictions go far beyond those in American law, and Kenya’s new constitution, approved overwhelmingly last August, codifies a ban on abortions in the country. But that’s not enough for Smith and US anti-abortion groups, who argue that the exception allowing for legal abortions to preserve the health of the mother “opens the door to abortion on demand.”
Smith wasn’t just meeting with Kenyan politicians and activists during his time in East Africa—he was actively politicking. On March 21, Smith spoke at an event on the new constitution sponsored by the Kenya Christian Professional Forum in Limuru, a town about 35 miles outside Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. A staffer for the US-based group Center for Reproductive Rights, which recently opened an office in Nairobi, took notes during the speech. In it, the congressman reportedly called for “a world free of abortion.” Smith also accused “pro-abortion NGOs” of having “hijacked” the maternal mortality issue in order to legalize the killing of the unborn, CRR says.
Hey! Who are you and what have you done with Kansas and the GOP!!!
KS GOP Rep. Slams Anti-Abortion Bill: I’m ‘Embarrassed To Be A State That Bases Its Laws On Untruths’
The nationwide war on a woman’s right to choose secured significant victories this week. Yesterday, Arizona became the first state in the nation to criminalize abortions based on a problem that doesn’t exist. Virginia will now force 80 percent of its clinics to close. Not to be outdone, the Kansas legislature swiftly approved not one, but two anti-abortion bills yesterday. HB 2218, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, strictly limits abortions after 22 weeks “based on disputed research that fetuses can feel pain at that point of development.” Though only 1.5 percent of abortions are performed after this period, the bill marks a significant victory for anti-choice activists who “have turned fetal pain into a new front in their battle to restrict or ban abortion.”
But not all Republicans bought the Republican argument that “this is a significant advancement” and “a more appropriate benchmark for late-term abortions.” “It’s based on false research,” said GOP Rep. Barbara Bollier who joined 8 other Republicans who voted against the bill:
“No one really knows and it’s based on false research,” said Rep. Barbara Bollier, R-Mission Hills. “It’s not universally held and I would be embarrassed to be a state that bases its laws on untruths.”
Bollier’s skepticism is shared by many in the medical profession. Though debate exists, a thorough review of the medical evidence in the Journal of the American Medical Association determined that “pain perception probably does not function before the third trimester.” Before then, “the fetus’s higher pain pathways are not yet fully developed and functional.”
But why worry about “untruths” when right-wing lawmakers can use “false research” to challenge Roe v. Wade? This bill, a twin of Nebraska’s “first in the nation” fetal pain law, challenges the ruling’s key viability standard — “the point at which the fetus can live outside the womb” — as the point when states can ban abortions. These laws could submit fetal pain as “a new dividing line at which abortions could be banned.” Nebraska’s law, enacted last year, has already had drastic consequences — just ask Danielle Deaver.
Kansas’s second anti-abortion bill, HB 2035, would require parental consent for anyone under 18 to have an abortion. Current law requires that one parent be notified, but neither parent can veto a daughter’s abortion. Unsatisfied with tightening parental control, the GOP included provisions that allow family members to sue doctors and force women to agree that they’re terminating a human being:
* Allow a woman’s close family members to sue if they believe an illegal abortion was performed.
* Require providers of abortions to provide patients with a newly revised informed consent statement including wording that abortion “terminates the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”
Both bills go directly to Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R). Brownback, “who is pro-life, has promised to sign” the fetal pain measure into law. Florida, Arkansas, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, and Kentucky are mulling similar “fetal pain” bills.
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/30/kansas-anti-abortion-bill/
“There appeared to be little consideration of the fact that it is a crime to falsely allege a crime.”
Professor Turley, I am pro-choice, I am a Democrat, I think Eric Turner is insane, but this statement of yours is ignorant as well. I remark on it only because you seem to claim some interest in civil liberties.
I don’t think there is any conflict between being pro-choice, and acknowledging our legal system does create incentives for women to lie about rape.
This has nothing to do with Turner and his nonsense.
It has to do with your non sequitor suggestion that since it is a crime to falsely allege a crime, no one would ever falsely allege a crime.
And if you really were reality based you would acknowledge that women can and do make false allegations of rape and domestic violence many times, often at the (perhaps indirect) suggestion of your fellow colleague lawyers that you choose to turn a blind eye to.
Indiana has gone crazy. Elaine, you are right that this is just one more example of the “She-ria” law taking over. Swarthmore, I get upset reading this obviously male dominance legislation. It is so crazy it makes me think that we are now entering Zombieland and the right wing wackos are the zombies!
OS,
That Arizona law is a farce. There is not any evidence that women are having abortions because of gender or race, but it makes Brewer look tough to her Teapublican buddies. I can’t imagine that it is Constitutional.
emw1,
“Please send that sentiment that you so eloquently posted to Rep. Turner!”
Do I note a hint of sarcasm or are you patronizing me?
Stamford Liberal,
Please send that sentiment that you so eloquently posted to Rep. Turner!
Tony S.: That state is not Arizona.
Indiana to women: we don’t want you, move to a state that does.
come on you girls! you know how much fun an abortion is! of course you girls will be lining up to have them just for shits and grins as soon as we let you. and, if we try to put a few sensible rules in place like it has to be rape or the life of the girl and not after the 6th week and a 45 day waiting period and you have to watch some torture porn of a baby being ripped apart and you have to attend classes where we give you the latest statistics we pull out of our asses you girls will just lie and sneak around to have you abortion fun anyway.
That goodness you sill girls have men to protect and care for you.
I have a suggestion – I’ll beat the living daylights out of Representative Turner. Then, when the turd seeks to have me arrested, I’ll just say it was a fake assault.
The hypocrisy of the GOP is stunning. They don’t want government in any aspect of life except the lives of women. I am so fucking sick and tired of these old white men stepping all over my rights as if I cannot make my own goddamned decisions; decisions that affect no one else but me. I am NO ONE’s property, I am NOT a fucking brood mare whose sole purpose in life is to reproduce so the end result can fund Social Security, ala Rick Sanitarium; I am NOT a second class citizen; I am NOT a circus animal trained to jump through the fifty-million fucking hoops the GOP seens content to have me jump through.
This further cements for me that there is no way in hell that I will ever vote Republican, I don’t give a shit who is in the running.
This news item from a couple of days ago, seen in Talking Points Memo:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/arizona_approves_nations_first_ban_on_gender_race.php?ref=fpb
Another battle erupts in the right-wing’s War on Women.
Elaine, I get so angry when I about read this everyday. It will get much worse if Obama loses and we lose the senate.
Swarthmore mom,
This is all part of the right-wingers’ implementation of “She-ria” law against women.
Dark Ages? I’d say they’re looking to have us gals thrown back even farther than that–maybe to the Stone Age!
Vote for these right wing republicans or stay home if you want the women in your family thrown back to the dark ages.
The republican assault on women continues. Am I partisan? yes.
So . . . Indiana.
You’ve decided that in order to keep your fundamentalist Biblically based control over women’s reproductive choice, it merits the additional societal costs of punishing victims of the crimes of rape and incest.
Let me repeat that . . . you are punishing victims of the crimes of rape and incest.
Crimes. Rape. Incest. Victims.
What would Jesus do?
Other than slap the shit out of you hypocrites that is.
Of course they will….say what? Did the Chocolaty Easter Melt in his hands….