The New Eugenics?

The United States keeps taking frightening steps backward in human rights. The latest? A Republican senator in the Indiana legislature wants to prevent gay, lesbian, and single people from getting medical assistance to conceive. Here's the story from 365gay.com:

(Indianapolis, Indiana) Legislation has been introduced in the Indiana legislature that would prohibit gays, lesbians and single people in Indiana from using medical science to assist them in having a child.

The bill has the support of Senator Patricia Miller, the chair of the Health Finance Commission where the legislation is currently being considered.

Miller says that assisted pregnancy is totally unregulated. The bill would bar any doctor from assisting in a pregnancy through intrauterine insemination, donation of an egg, donation of an embryo, in vitro fertilization and transfer of an embryo, and sperm injection without making a number of "determinations" about the "suitability" of the candidate.

Women seeking treatment would have to provide a certificate of satisfactory completion of an assessment required under the bill.

Among the determining factors is a requirement that the women be married to a person of the opposite sex. The assessment would contain a description of the family lifestyle and automatically exclude lesbians. Women would also have to provide proof that they have participated in faith-based or church activities.

A judge could not establish parentage of a child born through assisted reproduction without the assessment certificate and a separate certificate from the physician involved.

Courts would be prohibited from granting a petition to establish parentage if the parents have been convicted of crimes such as murder, reckless homicide neglect of a dependent [or] felony battery, or have a drug conviction.

Planned Parenthood of Indiana president Betty Cockrum calls it chilling and government intrusion on a person's private life.

The Health Finance Commission will vote October 20th on whether to recommend the legislation to the full General Assembly.

So Senator Miller believes that we humans have the right to control which of us reproduces? A woman who is married to a man, purports to be heterosexual, and participates in religious activities shouldn't necessarily be a parent. My mother did all of those things, yet she was abusive, inflicting emotional and physical pain on my brother and sister and me. If she'd have lived in Indiana and Miller's bill had been law, she'd have been deemed a fit parent under the law.

If you live in Indiana, write or call Senator Patricia Miller (district 32) now to condemn this terrifying bill:

200 W. Washington Street
Indianapolis, IN 46204

(317) 232-9400
(800) 382-9467

You can also use the e-mail form here to contact her.

GLBT women's_rights reproductive_rights EditorMom