New legislation introduced this week in Indiana would make abortion murder, declare fertilized eggs human lives, and potentially make every miscarriage and every period suspect.

In 2015, Indiana enacted legislation to ban abortion, require the burial of fetuses, and declare a fertilized egg a human life. The law was so vague and so restrictive that it could criminalize miscarriages and render every menstrual period suspect. The most restrictive portions of the law were struck down, but anti-choice legislators remain undaunted.

Last week, Republican Representative Curt Nisly introduced House Bill 1089. The proposed new law, in an apparent attempt to thwart any constitutional challenges, proclaims that the state will ignore any federal rulings striking down the law. It instructs law enforcement to disregard federal rulings, asserting, “Any court decision purporting to...strike down or enjoin the provisions of this article...shall be treated as nonauthoritative, void, and of no force.”

Perhaps even more alarming, the law appears to attempt to criminalize enforcing women’s constitutional right to abortion. It states that any entity that attempts to enforce any “act, law, treaty, order, rule, or regulation of the United States” that undermines Indiana’s abortion law has committed a crime. Indiana abortion clinics will no doubt sue to reverse the legislation if it passes, but under the new law, the very act of trying to undermine the legislation now becomes a crime.

Indiana: Punishing Women for Abortions at Any Cost

The new law is one of the most draconian pieces of anti-abortion legislation ever proposed, and that’s exactly the goal. Some highlights include:

The bill changes the definition of human life to include fertilized eggs. Medically, pregnancy begins at implantation. Under the law, human life would begin before pregnancy.

Abortion would be considered murder, making women and doctors eligible for the death penalty or for life in prison.

References to abortion or abortion clinics in other code sections would be removed, and abortion would instead be referred to as murder.

Local police could arrest federal officials who attempt to intervene to enforce the law if a court declares it unconstitutional.

Will Indiana Investigate Every Period and Miscarriage?

The law, like previous legislation, is so extreme that it could make miscarriage a crime. Parents who fail to care for their children can be charged with a wide range of crimes if those children are injured or die. If a fertilized egg is a human child, parents who fail to properly care for it—by, for example, avoiding alcohol or taking prenatal vitamins—may face legal consequences. That’s already happened at least once, when in 2015 a woman was arrested for having a miscarriage. The woman was sentenced to 20 years in prison for feticide.

The law could also make periods illegal, or at least an act warranting legal investigation. When a fertilized egg is defined as a human life, the end of that “life” is illegal. Yet many such fertilized eggs never implant in the uterus. Instead, the woman gets her period and never knows an egg was successfully fertilized. Will Indiana officials begin investigating every period as a potential homicide? Do birth control methods that prevent implantation become murder weapons? In a state that now proposes arresting federal officials and ignoring the law, it seems likely.

Killing Women for ‘Life’

When abortion is murder and embryos and fetuses are people every woman who has an abortion is a murderer. Every miscarriage and stillbirth warrants a criminal investigation. Every period signals a possible crime. This is the world anti-choice activists want, even as they move to slash funding for children and families, or redirect healthcare funding to anti-choice clinics.

Indiana is not alone in its attempts to kill women for seeking abortions. Ohio recently considered legislation that would kill women as a penalty for abortion. Georgia’s newly enacted 6-week abortion ban declares abortion murder, making women who undergo abortions eligible for the death penalty.

We’ve reached the point where legislators want to kill women and orphan their children in the name of life. Which, of course, shows that this has never been about life. It’s about punishing women. Republican legislators have never been good at protecting human life.

Witness the children who die because they can’t afford medical care, or the fact that the United States has the worst maternal mortality rate in the developed world. They are, however, exceptionally gifted at punishing women.