The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

The Christianists next door

Indiana sits at the "crossroads of America," interposing itself between Chicago and points east like that old racist yutz at the end of your block that you hope isn't sitting on his porch when you walk by. Yesterday, with much fanfare, they became the first state to ban almost all abortions after Dobbs, for many of the same reasons that they once declared pi to be equal to 22/7:

Indiana became the first in the nation to sign new restrictions into law – stripping away a right afforded to Hoosier women for the last 50 years over the course of a two-week special legislative session.

Gov. Eric Holcomb signed Senate Bill 1, which prohibits abortion at any stage of gestation except in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal anomalies or when the pregnant person’s life is at risk, within an hour of its passage late Friday night.

Late Friday, the Indiana Senate voted 28-19 to accept Senate Bill 1 as passed by the House earlier in the day.

The bill passed the House, 62-38, on Friday afternoon. The chamber’s 71 Republicans split on the issue, with nine voting against the bill. The party has been divided on the issue, with some feeling the bill goes too far in restricting abortion and others feeling it doesn’t go far enough.

Within hours, businesses started to pack their bags, with pharmaceutical mega-firm Eli Lilly the first to point out they won't get anyone talented to move to Indiana now. Doctors, too, don't want to work there.

As I said, people traveling over land from Chicago to anyplace east can't practically avoid Indiana, but that doesn't mean we have to spend money there. (Pity, because I had planned to check out two breweries in Michigan City this summer.)

Since 1816 Indiana has demonstrated what happens when too many stupid people occupy a single political unit. Now they've added religious extremism. Because when you get down to it, Indiana is pretty much the Afghanistan of the United States.

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