(INDIANAPOLIS) – As Indiana’s legislature begins debating abortion restrictions, Vice President Kamala Harris met with Democratic legislators in a show of support.
Shortly after the formal start of a General Assembly special session, Harris met behind closed doors at the Indiana State Library for about an hour with most of the 40 legislative Democrats. In brief public comments, she praised Democrats as standing up for women’s rights. The vice president argues regardless of your personal beliefs about abortion, the government shouldn’t be in charge of those decisions.
Harris says the Ohio 10-year-old who traveled to Indiana for an abortion shows the real-life stakes of the debate. While the proposed Indiana ban introduced by LaGrange Senator Susan Glick (R) includes exceptions for rape and incest, other states do not. Harris notes she prosecuted sex crimes in her first elected office as San Francisco district attorney, and calls it “outrageous” that some states would deny victims the right to make their own decisions even in those circumstances.
And Harris says Ohio’s six-week limit which prompted the trip to Indiana in the first place suggests “maybe some people need to actually learn how a woman’s body works.” She says that time limit amounts to an absolute ban, because women often don’t even realize they’re pregnant until later than that.
