Rekha Basu

rbasu@dmreg.com

In case you missed it, an Iowa state senator argued on the Senate floor this week for a measure to make abortion a “hate crime” under the Iowa statute. A hate crime against a group that doesn't even exist in society: The unborn.

Adel’s Republican Sen. Jake Chapman raised the proposal as an amendment to Senate File 2284. That bill being considered would add gender identity and gender expression to the list of protected classes covered by the state’s hate crimes law. The law brings enhanced penalties for crimes committed out of hatred on the basis of a victim's immutable characteristics, such as race, religion and sexual orientation. It applies to groups recognized for protection under Iowa’s civil rights law.

The bill protecting transgender people is backed by a long list of church, civic and law enforcement groups. It took on added symbolic urgency because the previous week, Kedarie Johnson, a 16-year-old Burlington High School junior described as female-to-male transgender, was shot to death in an alleyway, and was buried Wednesday. No arrests have been made. But Chapman instead used the debate to make a case against abortion, by trying to apply hate crimes law to "the unborn." He went into unnecessary details on the Senate floor about the mechanics of abortion, even ignoring Senate President Pam Jochum's admonitions that the details were irrelevant.

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His amendment was eventually ruled not germane. But by diverting attention away from legitimate debate on a serious bill to protect a vulnerable group of people from physical attack, Chapman came across as the sort of zealot you see parodied on late-night television. It's hard to tell if he was mocking or minimizing the severity of assaults on transgender people, or both. And how dare he suggest that exercising a constitutional right to end a pregnancy is based on hatred, and should make someone criminally culpable?

The transgender hate crime bill passed the Senate but isn't likely to pass the House.

Abortion has gotten relatively little attention this election cycle other than in reference to the Supreme Court vacancy that congressional Republicans are vowing to block President Barack Obama from filling. But some pro-choice advocates want abortion to be discussed more. In advance of Wednesday’s Florida Democratic debate, the National Abortion Rights Action League sent out a news release calling on debate moderators to ask about it. Noting that "women’s rights are routinely under fire in state legislatures and the U.S. Congress," the group said it wants to hear the candidates’ plans to address the shrinking availability of abortion services.

Across the country we've seen attempts to pass “personhood” amendments declaring a fetus a person from the moment of conception; to require women to view sonograms before they can get an abortion; to have rapes be determined “legitimate” before someone seeking Medicaid reimbursement for doing one can get paid.

In Iowa, we had state medical board efforts to single out telemedicine abortions from all other telemedicine procedures for banning. In 2013, Gov. Branstad signed into law a provision requiring that he personally sign off on every Medicaid-funded abortion claim. He relinquished that power in 2015.

Earlier this month the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily suspended implementation of a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling to close three of the only four abortion clinics in Louisiana. Under that state's 2014 law signed by Gov. Bobby Jindal, any doctor doing an abortion must have hospital admitting privileges. Abortion rights groups say that would force women to leave the state and go to Jackson, Miss. for abortions. And the nation's highest court is considering a Texas case, Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, involving a state law that doesn't just require doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. It also requires clinics to meet surgical-center type standards governing room and doorway sizes, staffing and anesthesia.

Whole Woman's Health, an abortion provider, maintains the law is not medically necessary. But advocates say if the state prevails, there could be as few as nine remaining abortion clinics in Texas, down from the current 19, which is down from 42 before the law went into effect in 2013. The court has granted a stay of implementation pending its ruling, expected in June.

Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, has called such laws “underhanded tactics” and “sham measures” to cut off women’s access to safe, legal abortion."

Anti-abortion advocates have every right to express their moral opposition through rallies, prayer sessions, opinion pieces and boycotts if they choose. If they have evidence of clinics violating the law, they should speak up. But since the Supreme Court has ruled there is a constitutional right to abortion, and has not recognized a fetus' personhood, any limits need to have a medical basis.

Measures like Chapman's amount to unproductive gimmickry and obstructionism that hurts private people trying to live their lives in accordance with the law, and free from coercion by elected officials. Let's hope this is the end of it, at least for now.