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Indiana lawmakers vote to keep exceptions from abortion ban

Indiana lawmakers vote to keep exceptions from abortion ban

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A deeply divided Indiana House voted Thursday to keep exceptions in cases of rape or incest in a bill that would ban nearly all abortions in the state.

The Republican-dominated House voted 61-39 to defeat an amendment that would have removed those exceptions, with a majority of GOP members wanting their removal.

The House vote displayed a similar division among Republicans seen in the state Senate over exceptions for rape and incest, which remained in the bill when an attempt in the Senate last week also failed to strip those exceptions.

Republican Rep. Karen Engleman sponsored the amendment, arguing that even a child conceived in a rape or incest attack deserved a chance at life.

“The intentional ending of human life has no place in medical practice,” Engleman said.

The Indiana proposal follows a political firestorm over a 10-year-old rape victim who traveled to the state from neighboring Ohio to end a pregnancy. The case gained wide attention when an Indianapolis doctor said the child had to travel to Indiana because a new Ohio law bans abortions if cardiac activity can be detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy.

Democratic legislators questioned Engleman on whether that girl’s abortion would be prohibited if her amendment was adopted. Engleman, who said she had a child as an unmarried teenager, responded that doctors could still determine whether the pregnancy threatened the life of a young girl.

Republican leadership said earlier this week that they support exceptions in cases of rape and incest. Republican House Speaker Todd Huston and GOP Rep. Wendy McNamara of Evansville, who is sponsoring the bill in the House, both said Monday that they favored allowing those exceptions.

McNamara said Monday that the law needed to be “conscious of those people who experienced trauma in rape and incest situations.”

While 39 House Republicans voted Thursday to strip the rape or incest exceptions from the bill, 32 Republicans joined all 29 House Democrats in keeping them in the bill. With a likely unified Democratic opposition to the full bill, Republican opponents of the exceptions will have to vote in favor of the bill for its passage. That vote could come Friday.

The Republican-controlled state Senate narrowly passed its abortion ban Saturday, 26-20, securing the minimum 26 votes needed to send it on to the House.

The House on Thursday also rejected, largely on party lines, a Democratic proposal that called for placing a non-binding question on the statewide November election ballot: “Shall abortion remain legal in Indiana?”

The proposal came after Kansas voters on Tuesday rejected a measure that would have allowed the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature to tighten abortion restrictions or ban the procedure outright. The vote was the first test of voters’ feelings about abortion since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.

McNamara spoke against the ballot question, pointing out that Indiana law doesn’t provide for statewide referendums. The only such statewide votes are on proposed constitutional amendments after they’ve been endorsed by two separately elected Legislatures.

Democratic Rep. Sue Errington of Muncie argued that Indiana voters want the chance to express their view on whether abortion should be legal.

“I don’t know if it will come out like it did in Kansas,” Errington said. “I hope it does, but I don’t have that guarantee.”

Last week, thousands of demonstrators on all sides of the abortion issue filled Statehouse corridors and sidewalks around the building as the Senate debated the bill. More than 100 people testified during an approximately nine-hour House committee hearing Tuesday. Only a handful of demonstrators watched Thursday’s debate from outside the chamber and in its gallery.

A House committee on Tuesday moved forward its version of the Senate-approved bill. The House bill would allow abortion exceptions for the physical health and life of the mother, as well as if a fetus is diagnosed with a lethal anomaly. It also adjusted the time frame when abortions would be permitted in cases of rape and incest.

The Senate voted to allow abortions up to 12 weeks post-fertilization for those under 16 and eight weeks for those 16 and older. The House version, instead, would create a blanket ban after 10 weeks post-fertilization on abortions in cases of rape and incest. Victims would also no longer be required to sign a notarized affidavit attesting to an attack.

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Arleigh Rodgers is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/arleighrodgers

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Kansas voters resoundingly protect their access to abortion

Kansas voters resoundingly protect their access to abortion

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas voters on Tuesday sent a resounding message about their desire to protect abortion rights, rejecting a ballot measure in a conservative state with deep ties to the anti-abortion movement that would have allowed the Republican-controlled Legislature to tighten restrictions or ban the procedure outright.

It was the first test of voter sentiment after the US Supreme Court’s decision in June that overturned the constitutional right to abortion, providing an unexpected result with potential implications for the coming midterm elections.

While it was just one state, the heavy turnout for an August primary that typically favors Republicans was a major victory for abortion rights advocates. With most of the vote counted, they were prevailing by roughly 20 percentage points, with the turnout approaching what’s typical for a fall election for governor.

The vote also provided a dash of hope for Democrats nationwide grasping for a game-changer during an election year otherwise filled with dark omens for their prospects in November.

“This vote makes clear what we know: the majority of Americans agree that women should have access to abortion and should have the right to make their own health care decisions,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.

After calling on Congress to “restore the protections of Roe” in federal law, Biden added, “And, the American people must continue to use their voices to protect the right to women’s health care, including abortion.”

The Kansas vote also provided a warning to Republicans who had celebrated the Supreme Court ruling and were moving swiftly with abortion bans or near-bans in nearly half the states.

“Kansans bluntly rejected anti-abortion politicians’ attempts at creating a reproductive police state,” said Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of the Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity. ”Today’s vote was a powerful rebuke and a promise of the mounting resistance.”

The proposed amendment to the Kansas Constitution would have added language stating that it does not grant the right to abortion. A 2019 state Supreme Court decision declared that access to abortion is a “fundamental” right under the state’s Bill of Rights, preventing a ban and potentially thwarting legislative efforts to enact new restrictions.

The referendum was closely watched as a barometer of liberal and moderate voters’ anger over the Supreme Court’s ruling scrapping the nationwide right to abortion. In Kansas, abortion opponents wouldn’t say what legislation they’d pursue if the amendment were passed and bristled when opponents predicted it would lead to a ban.

Mallory Carroll, a spokesperson for the national anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, described the vote as “a huge disappointment” for the movement and called on anti-abortion candidates to “go on the offensive.”

She added that after the US Supreme Court ruling, “We must work exponentially harder to achieve and maintain protections for unborn children and their mothers.”

The measure’s failure was also significant because of Kansas’ connections to anti-abortion activists. Anti-abortion “Summer of Mercy” protests in 1991 inspired abortion opponents to take over the Kansas Republican Party and make the Legislature more conservative. They were there because Dr. George Tiller’s clinic was among the few in the US known to do abortions late in pregnancy, and he was murdered in 2009 by an anti-abortion extremist.

Anti-abortion lawmakers wanted to have the vote coincide with the state’s August primary, arguing they wanted to make sure it got the focus, though others saw it as an obvious attempt to increase their chances of winning. Twice as many Republicans as Democrats have voted in the state’s August primaries in the decade leading up to Tuesday’s election.

“This outcome is a temporary setback, and our fight dedicated to value women and babies is far from over,” said Emily Massey, a spokesperson for the pro-amendment campaign.

The electorate in Tuesday’s vote wasn’t typical for a Kansas primary, particularly because tens of thousands of unaffiliated voters cast ballots.

Kristy Winter, 52, a Kansas City-area teacher and unaffiliated voter, voted against the measure and brought her 16-year-old daughter with her to her polling place.

“I want her to have the same right to do what she feels is necessary, mostly in the case of rape or incest,” she said. “I want her to have the same rights my mother has had most of her life from her.”

Opponents of the measure predicted that the anti-abortion groups and lawmakers behind the measure would push quickly for an abortion ban if voters approved it. Before the vote, the measure’s supporters refused to say whether they would pursue a ban as they appealed to voters who supported both some restrictions and some access to abortion.

Stephanie Kostreva, a 40-year-old school nurse from the Kansas City area and a Democrat, said she voted in favor of the measure because she is a Christian and believes life begins at conception.

“I’m not full scale that there should never be an abortion,” she said. “I know there are medical emergencies, and when the mother’s life is in danger there is no reason for two people to die.”

An anonymous group sent a misleading text Monday to Kansas voters telling them to “vote yes” to protect choice, but it was suspended late Monday from the Twilio messaging platform it was using, a spokesperson said. Twilio did not identify the sender.

The 2019 Kansas Supreme Court decision protecting abortion rights blocked a law that banned the most common second-trimester procedure, and another law imposing special health regulations on abortion providers also is on hold. Abortion opponents argued that all of the state’s existing restrictions were in danger, though some legal scholars found that argument dubious. Kansas doesn’t ban most abortions until the 22nd week of pregnancy.

The Kansas vote is the start of what could be a long-running series of legal battles playing out where lawmakers are more conservative on abortion than governors or state courts. Kentucky will vote in November on whether to add language similar to Kansas’ proposed amendment to its state constitution.

Meanwhile, Vermont will decide in November whether to add an abortion rights provision to its constitution. A similar question is likely headed to the November ballot in Michigan.

In Kansas, both sides together spent more than $14 million on their campaigns. Abortion providers and abortion rights groups were key donors to the “no” side, while Catholic dioceses heavily funded the “yes” campaign.

The state has had strong anti-abortion majorities in its Legislature for 30 years, but voters have regularly elected Democratic governors, including Laura Kelly in 2018. She opposed the proposed amendment, saying changing the state constitution would “throw the state back into the Dark Ages.”

State Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican hoping to unseat Kelly, supported the proposed constitutional amendment. He told the Catholic television network EWTN before the election that “there’s still room for progress” in decreasing abortions, without spelling out what he would sign as governor.

Although abortion opponents pushed almost annually for new restrictions until the 2019 state Supreme Court ruling, they felt constrained by past court rulings and Democratic governors like Kelly.

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Stafford reported from Overland Park and Olathe.

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Follow John Hanna on Twitter at https://twitter.com/apjdhanna. For more AP coverage of the abortion issue, go to https://apnews.com/hub/abortion.

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Bipartisan compromise bill would restore abortion rights

Bipartisan compromise bill would restore abortion rights

WASHINGTON (AP) — A bipartisan group of senators is pushing compromise legislation to restore abortion access in the wake of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, a long shot effort to put a majority of the Senate on the record opposing the decision.

While the bill is not expected to pass — and is unlikely to even get a vote — the legislation introduced by two Republicans and two Democrats on Monday is intended to send a signal to state legislatures and the public that a majority of the Senate supports codifying Roe , even if they can’t get the necessary 60 votes to pass it in the 50-50 Senate.

“We still think there is utility in showing there is a bipartisan majority that would want to codify Roe,” even though the bill doesn’t have enough votes, said Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who introduced the legislation with Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

The legislation would prohibit most state regulations that prevent abortion access before fetal viability, generally considered to be around 24 weeks. It would allow state restrictions after that point, as long as the mother’s life is protected. It would also protect access to contraception, an issue after Justice Clarence Thomas suggested in a concurring opinion to the decision overturning Roe that decisions guaranteeing access to contraception and other rights may need to be revisited.

The bipartisan bill is narrower than legislation preferred by most Democrats — passed by the House but blocked by Senate Republicans — that would have protected abortion rights and expanded them beyond what was allowed in the landmark 1972 Roe v. wade decision. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Collins and Murkowski all voted against that bill despite opposition to the overturning of Roe.

Kaine said he felt like Democrats “left votes on the table” after that effort. He said he was encouraged by a new law designed to reduce gun violence that passed the House and Senate after horrific shootings in Texas and New York.

“There were not 60 votes either” for that legislation until members decided that inaction was no longer an option, he said.

Democrats would need 10 Republican votes to overcome a filibuster and get a bill through the 50-50 Senate, but only Collins and Murkowski have publicly backed abortion rights.

By overturning Roe, the court has allowed states to enact strict abortion limits, including many that had previously been deemed unconstitutional. The ruling is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half of the states.

Already, a number of GOP-controlled states have moved quickly to curtail or outlaw abortion, while states controlled by Democrats have sought to champion access. Voters now rank abortion as among the most pressing issues facing the country, a shift in priorities that Democrats hope will reshape the political landscape in their favor for the midterm elections.

The support of Kaine and Sinema, a moderate, comes as some activists have accused President Joe Biden and other top Democrats of failing to respond forcefully enough to the decision.

Kaine said there is an increased sense of urgency since the June decision, and suggested he or others may go to the floor at some point and request a vote, an effort that is unlikely to succeed but could call attention to the bill as majorities of Americans say they disagree with the Supreme Court decision.

“People are paying attention to it,” Kaine said.

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