The Republic of T. Archives

Via Feministe comes yet another nightmare the religious right is cooking up. Indiana Republicans are cooking up a bill to make “unauthorized reproduction” illegal. In other words, only married women may legally reproduce.

Republican lawmakers are drafting new legislation that will make marriage a requirement for motherhood in the state of Indiana, including specific criminal penalties for unmarried women who do become pregnant “by means other than sexual intercourse.”

According to a draft of the recommended change in state law, every woman in Indiana seeking to become a mother through assisted reproduction therapy such as in vitro fertilization, sperm donation, and egg donation, must first file for a “petition for parentage” in their local county probate court.

Only women who are married will be considered for the “gestational certificate” that must be presented to any doctor who facilitates the pregnancy. Further, the “gestational certificate” will only be given to married couples that successfully complete the same screening process currently required by law of adoptive parents.

But don’t just take my word for it. You can read the law for yourself.

The post goes on to offer a glimpse of what’s behind the proposed law.

…Republican Senator Patricia Miller is both the Health Finance Commission Chair and the sponsor of the bill. She believes the new law will protect children in the state of Indiana and make parenting laws more explicit.

According to Sen. Miller, the laws prohibiting surrogacy in the state of Indiana are currently too vague and unenforceable, and that is the purpose of the new legislation.

“But it’s not just surrogacy,” Miller told NUVO. “ The law is vague on all types of extraordinary types of infertility treatment, and we wanted to address that as well.”

“Ordinary treatment would be the mother’s egg and the father’s sperm. But now there are a lot of extraordinary thing s that raise issues of who has legal rights as parents,” she explained when asked what she considers “extraordinary” infertility treatment.

You better believe gays and lesbians seeking to have children via artificial insemination, surrogacy, etc., will stopped in their tracks by this law.

What I don’t understand is why the law only addresses motherhood. Why isn’t it a class B felony under this law for a man to engage in “unauthorized reproduction”? You don’t have to read The Handmaid’s Tale to envision what these folks have in store.

Jill writes:

It’s an old pro-choice argument that any government which has the power to force you to have children also has the power to take your child-bearing rights away.

I’ll just add that a government which has the power to tell you who to have sex with or not have sex with will seek the power to force you to have children or take your child-bearing rights away.

And people say reproductive rights isn’t a gay issue.

Technorati Tags: current events, feminism, gay, gay rights, parenting.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 4th, 2005 at 8:05 pm and is filed under Current Events, Feminism, Gay Rights, Parenting, Politics, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.