Indiana Considers Banning Abortions for Down Syndrome

[AnnieBW]

In this month's federal and state legislative anti-abortion frenzy, it takes a lot for a bill to stand out, but Indiana state senator Travis Holdman has managed to pull it off. Holdman introduced a bill that would make it a felony for a doctor to abort a pregnancy for sex-selective reasons or because of "a diagnosis or potential diagnosis of the fetus having Down syndrome or any other disability." According to RH Reality Check, "The term 'any other disability' includes: a mental disability or retardation; a physical disfigurement; Scoliosis; Dwarfism; Down syndrome; Albinism; Amelia; and physical or mental disease." Like many other anti-choice bills percolating through the state legislatures, this one is based on model legislation crafted by Americans United for Life.

Yep, they're going there.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/01/14/indiana_abortion_bill_a_proposal_to_ban_abortions_for_down_syndrome_and.html

[LeftyMom]

1. There's a congenital physical disfigurement that runs in my family.

I'm not planning on having any more kids, but were I to get pregnant and find out that the fetus had it, I'd very seriously consider abortion.

I was born with a mild version, which means I have lingering physical symptoms that will be bothersome my entire life, but my problem was "corrected" in two outpatient procedures (the second for side effects of the first, so arguably only one.) I'd already seriously consider whether doing that to somebody was fair, or if starting over and trying again might be the better course.

But the more serious version can involve years of inpatient surgery and much more significant impacts on quality of life. Quite frankly I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, let alone a baby.

The idea that the state can make me have a baby with the severe version? Or, as some other states have tried to do, force a doctor not to tell me that the condition showed up on an ultrasound for fear that I might end the pregnancy? I can hardly explain the level of dread that such a thought inspires.

[uppityperson]

2. k&r for wider exposure. RANT!!!. So you can only get an abortion for 6 weeks, after a week wait

to make sure you really really mean it, with consent of your parent, spouse or the father of the poor little innocent one, after having a wand stick up your vagina for an ultrasound which was explained to you on detail so you knew what you were doing and didn't get confused you were signing up for a cruise and then only if you were brutally raped having reported it to the police including a pelvic exam with photos and pubic hair combing and waited to make sure the innocent little baby's daddy wasn't located to give permission and you still are less than 6 weeks along.

Unless you dearly wanted a baby and had the heartbreaking news that your child would either barely survive, or have such issues that you tore your heart out making the decision you could not do that to your child, got all the genetic testing done, all the genetic and other counseling done, made the decision and nope. You are not capable of making that decision. Capable of taking on all the responsibility and stress that would be needed but incapable of making the informed decision to abort.

Is that what they are saying?

Asses. Absolute asses.

[babylonsister]

3. Horrible! Rec'd for more eyes. nt

[Manifestor_of_Light]

4. Then Travis Holdman better pay all their medical bills, personally.

If he's for compulsory childbearing, no matter the severity of the deformity, then he damn well better put his money where his mouth is and PAY FOR THEIR SUPPORT AND MEDICAL CARE FOR THEIR ENTIRE LIVES, personally. Out of HIS personal funds. Because it's a personal decision.

He has no idea of the stress some of the parents are under. I have a healthy grown child and I certainly don't have an idea of the amount of stress some of the parents are under, but I can imagine a bit of it. He obviously thinks all deformities are able to be overcome and make the children lead valued and productive lives. Deformities vary all over the place in severity or fatality.

[SheilaT]

5. Yeah, they'd better be prepared to pay

all medical bills and anything else the family or the affected child eventually needs.

Personally, I don't think I'd have an abortion if I found my baby was going to have Down Syndrome. BUT, I've never been faced with that choice. The closest was when I didn't have any pre-natal testing when I was having my second child at age 38. But that's MY personal decision, and someone else who chooses differently, well that's what choice is all about.

I knew a woman whose first child had Tay-Sachs. I didn't know her at the time, only some years later, after her first child had died, she'd divorced and remarried, and now had a son the age of my oldest, which means he was about seven or eight at the time. She was, understandably, very protective of her son, and while she didn't directly say so, it was clear she would never go through having a child with that condition again.

It is so easy for someone who has never had to deal with having some devastating disease to blithely say it's no big deal or to condemn someone who won't give birth to a child with that disease. But those people then NEVER offer any meaningful support.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

23. Ha!

Indiana hasn't expanded Medicaid and our governor is very eager for SCOTUS to kill ACA subsidies to purchase health care coverage.

[caraher]

6. The most cynical quote on this is surely this one from the Indy Star story:

Fichter, with Indiana Right to Life, said he hoped the statehouse proposal would relieve the fear many parents feel after a diagnosis of disability. It would provide positive support, he said, when they are "simply scared and feel pressured to make abortion decisions," he said.

Yes, I'm sure someone faced with a problem pregnancy is oh-so-likely to feel relief that Mike Fichter, president and CEO of Indiana Right to Life, and allies, have so kindly removed all the pressure and fear by saying no, you have no choice in the matter, you're bearing this child, period.

Paternalistic, much? Remind me which party is concerned about keeping the "durned gubmint" out of our business?

Or did I miss the part of the bill where the "pro-life" faction demonstrated their true commitment to the dignity of all life by committing to ensure all the extra care those born because of this will require over the course of their lives? Oh wait, that would be government tyranny if we provided government health care.

[AtheistCrusader]

7. I don't see a single commenter up this point acknowledging the real problem.

This is just a single attack, in a WAR to ban all abortions. Chipping away. A little here. A little there. Waiting periods, sonograms, trans-vaginal ultrasounds, parental consent, developmental milestone cutoffs.. Now 'oh, your kid might have a congenital defect'.

Just one attack, one issue. They'll be back with more. They're cooking up more, right now.

They've got the end game in mind folks; outright total ban.

[caraher]

8. True

Another element is imposing onerous requirements on clinics like arbitrary standards for admitting privileges at hospitals just to close as many clinics as possible.

I actually think they're rather deliberately NOT going for an outright ban simply because having annual rallies against Roe v. Wade and continued legal abortion are powerful ways to keep their political base in line (e.g. Catholics who feel they have to be single issue voters even when everything else in the Republican agenda is actively against church teaching). While the religious true believers in banning abortion are utterly sincere about that goal, the political movers need to nurse that grudge against reproductive rights and milk it for everything is worth. A de facto ban works better for them than does a flat-out prohibition. The effect on our freedoms, however, is essentially the same either way.

[AtheistCrusader]

14. When they finally come for it, when they offer a total ban,

the issue will be so moth-eaten with holes from all the depredations they have made into a human right... that it will hardly matter anymore. People may not fight back at all.


I could be wrong though. As a voting bloc, evangelicals are shrinking. Maybe there's hope yet. I just can't see it from here.

[Hekate]

9. Oh, we all know that part, AC, and it's been addressed in at least one other thread...

...on the subject of birth control bans.

I'll tell you what they are -- heartless. They seriously do not care what level of suffering they inflict on women -- or children. They are fanatics.

[AtheistCrusader]

15. I know, I just have to bring it up.

It seems incumbent to do so, whenever this subject crops up. They are playing a very, very long game, and the stakes are dead serious.

I didn't know there was another thread on it though. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Hekate]

19. I've been a Planned Parenthood supporter for close to 50 years

I get into these threads nearly every time I see them, especially when someone ignorantly propagates the lies that have been spread about abortion regulations -- such as the one that there are "no restrictions on abortion even up to 9 months," when in fact Roe vs Wade clearly set out restrictions by each trimester, and left it up to the states to regulate it further.

I agree, the fanatics on the Right Wing play a long game, and they play for keeps.

[sheshe2]

10. It is a WOMANS RIGHT TO CHOSE!

END OF DISCUSSION! Her body her choice, get the hell out of her uterus Travis. You have no rights there.

[Hekate]

11. Back about 1977, I met a baby with such a severe facial deformity I wondered how she could eat...

...or breathe, or basically how this poor child was able to sustain life. Her mother held her in her arms while picking up her other, perfectly beautiful, daughter from daycare. I was there to pick up my own little girl.

I smiled at the baby, said "Hi there, sweety," figuring she didn't get many smiles from strangers, but I have never seen anything like it before or since, and I was deeply shocked. In chatting with the mother I found out it was a named syndrome, and that her child was going to have to endure one surgery after another for many many years in order to even approximate a normal face with normal functions.....

Parents do the very best they can for the children they have, but no one in their right mind would choose to knowingly bring a child into the world to suffer and suffer.

What kind of blind fanaticism possesses Americans United for Life? And what kind of heartless opportunism possesses legislators who cater to them?

[AtheistCrusader]

13. Like Mother Teresa, they LIKE suffering.

Suffering brings them 'closer to the dignity of god' or somesuch bullshit.
http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/26362

[LittleGirl]

12. Always from a man too n/t

[ReRe]

16. I am sick and tired...

... of brainwashed insane fundamentalists doing everything they can to cram their religion up the vagina of every female in this country. AAMOF, I wish they would remove the word "God" from everything. Our money, official seals, the pledge, end the "Prayer Breakfast." I wouldn't require they tear down the National Cathedral in DC. That's where religion belongs... in Churches, Synagogues, or Mosques. Not in our government, not in our schools.

[ND-Dem]

17. what's "amelia"?

"Down syndrome; Albinism; Amelia"

[ck4829]

24. Might be referring to tetra-amelia syndrome

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetra-amelia_syndrome

[ND-Dem]

25. thanks. i'd never heard of it, though i'm familiar with 'prince randian' because of

the film 'freaks'. I didn't know that's what he had though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Randian


and this guy, come to think of it. I heard his TED talk though I didn't know that's what he had either:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Vujicic

[ND-Dem]

18. My neighbors had a daughter that they cared for at home who was severely retarded.

She laid on the floor in diapers until she died at about age 13; contorted and non-verbal except for strange creaking sounds; and she sort of rocked, but not exactly, while laying on the floor. Her life was being spoon-fed and having her diapers changed and laying on the floor until she died.

[tanyev]

20. So now they do want the government coming between you and your doctor.

[Vinca]

21. I assume this added intrusion into the private lives of women will come along with

additional financial support for disabled children . . . right?

[wavesofeuphoria]

22. It's about control of and power over women ...

wrapped up in some self-righteous "religion" argument.

Women are human and should have human rights ... among them is body autonomy.

Fuck this misogynistic, religion-backed bullshit!!

[YarnAddict]

26. Wait . . .

What??

[roamer65]

27. Violation of Roe v Wade

It will get struck down in the courts if passed.

[jwirr]

28. There is a reason for that. Downs is one of the diseases that you cannot determine the level of

functioning. I have worked with children who would not live much more than a few months and adults who are happy people who function pretty well. If they could determine the functional levels many people would not object.

As many of you know I have a severely disabled child. The only life support she is on is a feeding tube in the stomach so she actually is not terminal - at least no more so than the rest of us. I will say that I am damned glad that she was born before we had legal abortion or anyway to determine a disability until after birth. I cannot imagine not having known her and I did not have to make the decision to abort.

But I also fully support the right of a woman to get an abortion - it is her body and it is her life that is going to be impacted.

Having said that the law makers are forgetting that abortion is legal apart from any disability. Their law would set these children apart from all others that are aborted.

[niyad]

29. travis, you are, of course, going to support these children you are demanding be born, and their

familes, for their entire lives, yes?

if not, STFU!!!

[ncjustice80]

30. Ugh this law is so ass backwards.

Rethugs hate the disabled- shouldnt they be ENCOURAGING women to abort disabled children to save money???