Mitch Daniels to Sign Bill De-Funding Planned Parenthood

Mitch Daniels to Sign Bill De-Funding Planned Parenthood

by Steven Ertelt | Washington, DC

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels says he will sign a bill into law that revoked funding for the Indiana affiliate of the Planned Parenthood abortion business and bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Daniels’ decision puts into place one of the strongest pro-life bills in the history of the state and allows him a chance to repair the relationship he strained with pro-life voters last year with his proposed truce on social issues, including abortion, that could adversely affect him in any bid for the Republican nomination for president.

Daniels issued a statement about HEA 1210, which the Indiana General Assembly approved earlier in the week.

“I will sign HEA 1210 when it reaches my desk a week or so from now. I supported this bill from the outset, and the recent addition of language guarding against the spending of tax dollars to support abortions creates no reason to alter my position,” Daniels said. “The principle involved commands the support of an overwhelming majority of Hoosiers, as reflected in greater than 2:1 bipartisan votes in both legislative chambers.”

Daniels added that he “commissioned a careful review of access to services across the state and can confirm that all non-abortion services, whether family planning or basic women’s health, will remain readily available in every one of our 92 counties. In addition, I have ordered the Family and Social Services Administration to see that Medicaid recipients receive prompt notice of nearby care options. We will take any actions necessary to ensure that vital medical care is, if anything, more widely available than before.”

“Any organization affected by this provision can resume receiving taxpayer dollars immediately by ceasing or separating its operations that perform abortions,” he said.

The provisions contained in the bill will amount to the most substantial block of pro-life legislation passed in Indiana since the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973 and they include one revoking taxpayer funding through the state government for the Planned Parenthood abortion business.

House Bill 1210 contains provisions to end all state-directed funding for businesses that do abortions, to protect pain-capable unborn children beginning at 20 weeks, to opt-out of abortion coverage in any state health exchanges required under the new federal health law, to require that women considering abortion be given full, factual information in writing, and to require doctors who do abortions, or their designees, to maintain local hospital admitting privileges in order to streamline access to emergency care for women injured by abortion.

Immediarely after Daniels released his statement this afternoon saying he would sign the legislation, abortion advocates went on the attack with NARAL president Nancy Keenan saying,

But pro-life advocates were supportive of the legislation.

“This legislation places Indiana on the vanguard of efforts to protect the unborn, to deny public funds to businesses that profit from abortion, and to ensure that women considering abortion have full and factual information about such issues as fetal development and alternatives to abortion,” stated Indiana Right to Life President and CEO Mike Fichter after the House approved the bill. “We applaud Republican leadership in the House and Senate for its decisive action and will urge Governor Daniels to waste no time in signing these important provisions into law.”

Daniels has a pro-life record as governor but he has upset pro-life voters repeatedly with his comment supporting a truce on social issues like abortion. As recently as mid-March, Daniels said he remains committed to the social issues truce — which advocates putting abortion on the back burner while the next president tackles the challenges of turning around the beleaguered economy.

State senators voted to add a measure that was not brought up earlier in the year to a larger pro-life bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy because unborn children are capable of feeling massive pain at that point in pregnancy. The state Senate voted 36 to 13 to add the de-funding provision to HB 1210, which has the strong support of pro-life groups like Indiana Right to Life and the Indiana Family Institute.

Daniels has repeatedly said he is waiting to make a decision on a 2012 presidential bid until this year’s legislative session wraps up. That points to a potential early May decision.

A Planned Parenthood in Indiana in 2008 suspended an employee after a video showed the staffer covering up a girl’s statutory rape. The video was a part of an earlier series of undercover investigations Live Action performed with a UCLA student, Lila Rose, posing as a 13-year old girl who had sexual relations with a 31-year-old man.

On tape, the Planned Parenthood nurse acknowledges her responsibility to report the abuse, but assures the student, Lila Rose, she will not.

“Okay, I didn’t hear the age [of the 31-year-old]. I don’t want to know the age,” she tells Rose.