Committee OKs Ban on Most Abortions
    By Ed Anderson
    The Times-Picayune

    Thursday 20 April 2006

Bill is expected on Senate floor next week.

    Senate Bill 33 by Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, cleared the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare after the provision was added. The bill would allow abortions only to save the life of the mother. But Sen. Diana Bajoie, D-New Orleans, said she wanted to "make it more pro-life" by not allowing any exceptions.

    She did not offer the amendment but served notice she will on the Senate floor, where Nevers is expected to take up the bill next week. "I do have some concerns about this bill," Bajoie said. "It should be all or nothing. . . . Life is life."

    Nevers said he will work with Bajoie to "get as much of a pro-life bill as I can."

    Nevers to fight changes

    Sen. Joel Chaisson II, D-Destrehan, a member of the panel, told Nevers he thought the committee was going to have a chance to vote on an amendment to allow abortions in cases of rape and incest. "My concern for your bill is if we don't have such amendments, that lessens your chances of getting rid of abortions on demand (in the state)," he said. "Think about that between now and the (Senate) floor" debate.

    Amendments to add those exceptions are expected to be offered on the Senate floor, although Nevers said he would oppose them.

    The South Dakota Legislature recently passed a law that would ban abortions except to save the life of a mother. Anti-abortion forces said six states besides Louisiana are debating similar anti-abortion proposals.

    Before the frequently emotional debate on the bill began, Nevers offered several amendments to give the state the authority to prohibit abortions if the nation's highest court reverses the 33-year-old ruling that legalized abortion, or if an amendment to the U.S. Constitution is adopted to ban abortions.

    Abortion foes say that with a more conservative Supreme Court in place, the day is coming when the Roe v. Wade decision will be tossed out. But some lawmakers expressed skepticism.

    "This is just feel-good legislation," said Sen. Lydia Jackson, D-Shreveport, a committee member who normally opposes anti-abortion bills. "This is a bill that does absolutely nothing."

    Jail time

    Nevers' bill would set penalties of a minimum of a year in jail and a maximum of 10 years, and a minimum fine of $1,000 and a maximum fine of $100,000 for anyone who performs an abortion. A woman seeking the procedure would not face criminal charges.

    In 1991, the state passed an anti-abortion bill allowing abortions only to save a mother's life and in cases of rape and incest, but it was vetoed by then-Gov. Buddy Roemer. The Legislature overrode Roemer's veto, the first time in modern political times that has occurred in Louisiana. In 1992, federal courts threw out the law, leaving the state without a statute to govern abortions. The Legislature has gone on record outlining a policy stating that abortion would automatically be prohibited in Louisiana if Roe is reversed, but Nevers and others said that isn't enough.

    "If Roe versus Wade is overturned, Louisiana would not have a law on the books, because it (the last law) was ruled unconstitutional," he said.

    Nevers said he did not want to have exceptions for rape and incest victims because it would subject victims of crimes of violence to "another violent act. . . . That child (conceived in rape or incest) had nothing to do with that awful crime."

    Dr. Beverly McMillian, a physician who at one time ran an abortion clinic in Jackson, Miss., testified on the need for Nevers' bill. "Abortion hurts a woman" mentally and physically, causing depression, and possibly long-term physical damage to her reproductive system, she said. "Abortion on demand . . . has not improved women's health or made abortion safer."

    Connie Danforth of Luling testified that she had an abortion 28 years ago and regrets it. She said she was told by abortion advocates that if she had the abortion early she was getting rid of a glob of tissues, not a baby. "I became self-destructive," she said. "I felt I did not deserve to live. . . . I thought I was getting rid of a problem, but I had nothing but a dead baby."

    'Health and safety at risk'

    Julie Mickelberry, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta, said banning abortions will not stop them, but will force them underground.

    "It will only put women's health and safety at risk," she said. "It (the bill) places politics above the health and safety of women and is wildly out of step with mainstream America."

    She called on lawmakers to better finance women's health programs and increase "access to contraception and medically accurate sex education" as alternatives."

    The Rev. Ignacio Castuera, a Methodist minister who is national chaplain of Planned Parenthood, said criminalizing abortion will only force the wealthy to travel areas where abortions are legal, and that poor women will run the risk of having their lives endangered by "back-alley abortions."

    "This would create an apartheid health care system for women," he said.

    Ed Anderson can be reached at eanderson@timespicayune.com or (225) 342-5180.