Indiana is the second state to enact the law. North Dakota adopted similar restrictions in 2013.
Gov. Pence signed the bill hours before a deadline to take action on the proposal, which was approved by the Republican-led Legislature two weeks ago, according to the report. While the measure is scheduled to take effect in July, Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky said it will request the law be blocked in court before then.
“It is clear that the governor is more comfortable practicing medicine without a license than behaving as a responsible lawyer, as he picks and chooses which constitutional rights are appropriate,” Betty Cockrum, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky said in a statement, according to the report.
Additionally, several female Republican members of the Indiana Legislature, as well as a national group of gynecologists, have criticized the law.
“We know that you’re going to be forcing women and families to suffer emotionally because they’re going to be forced to carry pregnancies that are not viable,” said Kate Connors, director of communications for the AmericanCollege of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which recently wrote to Gov. Pence urging him to defeat the bill. “We’ve been hoping that the resounding chorus of voices would hit home. It obviously did not.”
However, Gov. Pence defended the law, calling it “a comprehensive pro-life measure that affirms the value of all human life,” in a statement. “I believe that a society can be judged by how it deals with its most vulnerable — the aged, the infirm, the disabled and the unborn.”
In addition to banning abortions over fetal genetic defects and abnormalities, the law will ban abortions motivated by a fetus’ race, sex or ancestry. It also mandates the only way to dispose of an aborted fetus is through burial or cremation, according to the report.
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