The Indiana Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that prohibits women from obtaining an abortion based on the race, gender or disability of the fetus she is carrying.
Bill co-author Liz Brown (R-Fort Wayne) says the measure protects unborn children who have disabilities, such as Down syndrome. Brown says physicians often encourage mothers to abort less-than-perfect fetuses.
But Democratic Senator Greg Taylor (D-Indianapolis) says the bill violates existing state and federal laws which allow a woman to get an abortion within the first three months of pregnancy.
“If I were to stand up here today and say that I want to change the law, then I would change the law," he says. "I wouldn’t create a new one."
Brown says the bill simply adds restrictions to Indiana’s existing abortion law.
“This is what we call the soft bigotry of low expectations,” she says. “That those whose lives we think don’t have the value or have the worth that we do sitting here in the chamber today should not be born.”
The bill allows the abortion of a baby expected to die in the mother’s womb, or within months of birth.
The measure will now be considered in the Indiana House of Representatives.
