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House Committee Approves Bill To Ban Eyeball Tattooing

Lauren Chapman
/
IPB News

A House panel Monday unanimously approved legislation its author calls "the grossest bill of the session." The measure would ban the practice of eyeball tattooing.

Gene Helveston is a longtime Indiana ophthalmologist. He supports the bill to ban the practice of tattooing an eyeball – though he acknowledges he doesn’t know of anyone who does it or has had it done.

“But I think that’s because the proposition is so preposterous that nobody who I keep company with would do such a thing,” Helveston says.

Bill author Sen. John Ruckelshaus (R-Indianapolis) says the same – he doesn’t know of anyone in the state in the eyeball tattoo business. He says his bill makes sure that doesn’t change.

“It makes this a civil fine. It bans it and only those ophthalmologists, those trained physicians can work on an eye,” Ruckelshaus says.

The bill’s civil fine would be up to $10,000 per incident.

Brandon Smith is excited to be working for public radio in Indiana. He has previously worked in public radio as a reporter and anchor in mid-Missouri for KBIA Radio out of Columbia. Prior to that, he worked for WSPY Radio in Plano, Illinois as a show host, reporter, producer and anchor. His first job in radio was in another state capitol, in Jefferson City, Missouri, as a reporter for three radio stations around Missouri. Brandon graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a Bachelor of Journalism in 2010, with minors in political science and history. He was born and raised in Chicago.
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