Matthew Tully

For the 11 years I’ve written this column, I’ve largely avoided one topic: Abortion.

I've avoided it for many reasons. For one, I saw no way that anything I wrote could help, even a little, in a debate that is as fierce and divisive as anything in American life. Second, and much more important, I truly believe that on this issue the voices of women are more powerful and compelling than any words I could produce. And, finally, I have to be honest and admit that I have never once felt comfortable writing or even talking about this topic.

I'm sorry.

I apologize because my desire to avoid this topic led me to keep my mouth shut in recent months as Gov. Mike Pence once again thrust Indiana into an unnecessary and harmful culture war. I'm sorry because my discomfort led me to sit by as Republican state lawmakers and our horribly misguided and miscast governor waged a war on women’s rights and continued to damage the state so many of us love so dearly.

Women protest abortion bill with Periods for Pence

I'm quite certain that nothing I could have written three months ago or three weeks ago would have influenced a governor whose greatest failing is that he lives in a ridiculously tight bubble dominated by fringe ideological voices. This governor does not listen to me. But that doesn't mean I was right to sit by as the state's destructive and possibly unconstitutional new abortion law moved through the state legislature. No, instead of hoping another horrible idea from the Republican legislative supermajority would just go away, I could have at least spoken out.

I'm sorry.

I don't think I'm alone here. On Facebook, I've seen posts from people who say that while they have stayed away from this toxic political topic in the past, this time things have gone too far. I've heard from acquaintances who have never once previously broached the topic of abortion with me but now are doing so.

The outcry is the result of Indiana having a governor who thinks first and foremost not about what is best for the long-term health of this state, but about his personal ideological views, and about the wishes of a small band of social-issue lobbyists and leaders who now enjoy having a puppet in the governor's office. The outcry is because Indiana has been subject in recent years to laws and decisions that read like a wish list of the farthest and most extreme elements of the far right.

If a court does not step in first, Indiana's new abortion law goes into effect on July 1. In a state that is already home to many of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, this law hurls Indiana into unique and extreme territory.

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Rushed through the legislature, and pushed forward almost exclusively by Republican men, the law will harm the relationship between women and their physicians, putting doctors at risk of state sanctions and wrongful death lawsuits, while also discouraging a free flow of information with their patients. It pushes women to give birth even if it is clear their baby will not survive. It inserts the heavy hand of the state into all sorts of brutally personal decisions; the law even requires the cremation or interment of the remains of an aborted or miscarried fetus.

Supporters have highlighted the law's ban on abortions due solely to a diagnosis of Down syndrome. For what appear to be marketing reasons, though, they have not highlighted its ban on abortions due to even more severe diagnoses. As Indianapolis obstetrician Katherine McHugh wrote so powerfully in the Washington Post, the law would "require women to carry to term pregnancies with some severe and disastrous genetic abnormalities." The law, she wrote, "is driven not by science or research, but by politics."

That pretty much sums up the bill, and the Pence administration in general. Too often, the stench of Pence's 12 years as a partisan social-issues champion in Congress has polluted everything else he's done as governor. Time and again, he has committed the one foul a governor should never commit: He has recklessly hurt his state despite knowing his actions would do so.

Pence once told me that the learning curve for a governor is more like a line that goes straight up. And while mistakes are understandable in a job so big, what is mind-boggling is that he has not learned from his mistakes. Last year, he dealt his state a tremendous blow by signing a Religious Freedom law that was at its core a piece of state-authorized discrimination. The ripple effects of that law, economic and otherwise, will be felt for years.

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So how did he respond a year later? Well, with another piece of ideological legislation that has once again turned him into a national laughingstock and, more important, harmed the state he is supposed to be leading. Even many abortion opponents have labeled this law unwise and harmful.

I can't help but be puzzled by the emotional words the governor included in a statement announcing his decision to sign the new abortion law. His words were filled with deep compassion for the unborn and for people facing disabilities and challenges. Yet the bill he signed, the one that seeks to overturn the law of the land and force women into decisions they know are not best for them, includes not one penny for the challenges and costs parents could face because of this law. In the end, it's another empty political stunt from an empty suit of a governor.

This is the same governor, after all, who for unexplained political reasons turned Indiana's back on tens of millions of dollars that would have provided high-quality preschool programs for the most at-risk children in the state. How's that for compassion? This is the same governor who abhors abortion but attacks those organizations that do the most to provide family planning services. This is the same governor who, time after time, has put his ideological obsessions ahead of the state's best interests. This is the same governor whose one term has been a disaster in so many ways, and who has led mildly conservative-leaning Indiana as if it were a monolithic, far-right state driven not by concerns about jobs and education but by hot-button social issues.

I couldn't have stopped Pence from signing yet another destructive piece of legislation. That's kind of his thing. But I could have spoken out earlier. I'm sorry that I didn't.

Thank you for reading. You can reach me at matthew.tully@indystar.com or at Twitter.com/matthewltully.