Anti-Women, Anti-Information: Indiana abortion bill advances.

A few weeks ago I wrote about an anti-choice bill in Indiana that was designed to drive a wedge between disability rights and reproductive rights activists. I argued:

As we head into the 2015 legislative session, we need to be prepared for anti-choice filed a bill last week to prohibit abortions based on fetal determinations of sex or potential disability. The proposed Indiana bill is very similar to legislation that failed to pass in last year’s session and mirrors a North Dakota bill that did pass in 2013. Regardless of this bill’s progress, it should serve as a warning to pro-choice disability rights activists of the legislative maneuvers sure to take place in the coming months.
individuals and groups to use the issue of disability-selection abortions to try and widen the divide between disability rights activists and those working for reproductive rights. It’s already begun in Indiana.

Here's the bad news - The bill is, in fact, advancing. And here's the worse news - A similar bill has been proposed in Ohio.

A yet-to-be introduced bill would prohibit abortions sought because a pre-natal screening or diagnostic test showed the fetus could have Down syndrome, also known as trisomy 21. The genetic disorder causes developmental delays and intellectual disability of varying degrees. Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life, said details such as how the law would be enforced are still being determined as the bill is drafted.

This language is being pushed by anti-choice organizations in collaboration with their favorite lawmakers. It is the a new front (there are so many) of the abortion wars, and pro-choice anti-eugenics pro-information advocates need to be ready.

What's more,  the anti-choice lawmakers are doing the usual deception that this is pro-woman. The co-author of the bill said:

Bill co-author Sen. Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne, said physicians too often steer women toward decisions without giving them enough information.
"I think what we're seeing today is a rush to judgment," Brown said.

There is just enough truth here to be dangerous. In fact women do make the decision to terminate the pregnancies based on partial or erroneous information, as Mark Leach discusses here. However, if Brown is really concerned with information, then pass a pro-information bill mandating physicians and genetic counselors provide full and accurate information. Instead, Indiana is going another direction.

Other lawmakers in Indiana have introduced a faux-information bill, following Louisiana in an attempt to hijack the pro-information coalition and bend it to serve anti-choice needs. I wrote:

In my RHRC essay I stated that pro-choice disability rights advocates like myself must agree that disability-selection abortion should be legal AND agree that talking about eugenic principles at play in such abortions can be discussed without undermining choice.

With right-wing legislators using pro-information as a way to further restrict access to reproductive choice, I don't know that I can make that second statement in good faith. I don't know that I can advocate for pro-information bills anymore.

In general, conservative legislatures pass anti-choice bills while simultaneously removing social supports for poor families. Even when the bills explicitly deal with disability-selection abortions, as in the two Indiana bills, they are not disability rights legislation. They are attempts to divide and conquer.

The state has no right to control women's bodies. The state also has no right to mandate health care providers lie or conceal  information from pregnant women.

And other right-wing states are sure to follow, because the national anti-choice organizations are drafting legislation and passing it around. Be ready.

Faux-Information: Indiana and the Collapse of the Pro-Information Coalition

Last week I wrote about a new bill in Indiana that forbids disability-selection and sex-selection abortion. The latter almost never happens. The former happens all too often. The combination is an attempt to do two things: 1) split the pro-choice and disability rights movement and 2) gain support for abortion restrictions by nominally pro-choice individuals who nevertheless feel uncomfortable with these kinds of selective abortions. In the linked piece, I talk about the bill and the intersectional approach that we need in response.

I also discussed a bill that did pass last session in Louisana. It's nominally pro-information, but as I've posted about before (here's my blog post, a guest post that I hosted, another good essay), it distorts a movement based on coalition building and makes it just another tool of the anti-choicers. Instead of presenting all the information, the whole point of pro-information as a concept, it makes it illegal for doctors to present termination as a "neutral or acceptable" option. If this continues, the pro-information coalition will dissolve.

What I didn't know is that another Indiana legislator has proposed a bill with the same language as in Louisana (a lot of this legislative language gets written by interest groups and disseminated, so it's not a surprise they copy each other.).

HB 1093 in Indiana "Requires the state department of health to collect certain information to be disseminated by health facilities and health care providers to parents who receive prenatal or postnatal test results for Down syndrome or any other disability."

That's pretty typical and I am in favor of accurate information. I know far too many people who were told simply false information by the medical providers after getting a pre-natal diagnosis, or, more commonly, were simply not told relevant details about the changing nature of life with Down syndrome. We should all be in favor of accurate information.

HB 1093 though follows the LA bill in inserting this clause:

"The information does not engage in discrimination based on disability or genetic variation by explicitly or implicitly representing pregnancy termination as a neutral or acceptable option when a prenatal test indicates a probability or diagnosis that the unborn child has Down syndrome or any other disability."

Several thoughts.

This could mean the end of the pro-information coalition. In my RHRC essay I stated that pro-choice disability rights advocates like myself must agree that disability-selection abortion should be legal AND agree that talking about eugenic principles at play in such abortions can be discussed without undermining choice.

With right-wing legislators using pro-information as a way to further restrict access to reproductive choice, I don't know that I can make that second statement in good faith. I don't know that I can advocate for pro-information bills anymore.

In general, conservative legislatures pass anti-choice bills while simultaneously removing social supports for poor families. Even when the bills explicitly deal with disability-selection abortions, as in the two Indiana bills, they are not disability rights legislation. They are attempts to divide and conquer.

Hopefully, disability advocates, many of them in fact not as pro-choice as I am, will work to defeat or amend the bill in Indiana. Otherwise, I can't be a part of the pro-information coalition and will start strongly advocating for others to reject the model as well. Because even if some states pass neutral bills and others pass these faux-information laws, the former feed the latter, and we'll have to stop the whole project.

The state has no right to tell doctors to lie or conceal information from expectant mothers.