Women Protest Indiana’s New Abortion Law By Calling Governor to Report Their Periods

Indiana is on a roll. Not only was a woman there convicted of both child neglect and feticide despite all logic and sentenced to 20 years in prison because prosecutors think she tried to induce an abortion, but last week governor Mike Pence signed a law that says abortion cannot legally be performed if it is done for what the government says are the wrong reasons–sex or race selection or chromosomal abnormalities. The new law even says that a woman must dispose of any miscarried or aborted fetal tissue by either cremation or burial. Those aren’t free, either.

This “proper burial” nonsense makes no sense except as a means to punish women–especially poor women, who probably don’t have money around to pay for tiny funerals for miscarried embryos. Medical facilities might cremate fetal tissue, but those costs will probably be passed on to the patients. Human bodies can be donated to science for research or medical training, and that’s pretty fantastic and important. (Some people even donate their remains to those body farms where CSI technicians are taught to study bodies in the field.) For some reason, Indiana has decided that is not OK to donate fetal tissue to science, and that it is a much better use of everyone’s time and money to hold little funerals.

In response there is now a Facebook page and protest movement called “Periods for Pence.”  (I just went over and found one of my friends is already in it, and that’s always nice to see.) The group’s founder points out that fertilized eggs can be expelled from the body during a woman’s normal menstrual cycle, and she might never know. That means that any time a woman has her period, she might unknowingly be having a miscarriage, which in Indiana means she could get into a lot of trouble if she doesn’t report it.

So they’re reporting it.

|Fertilized eggs can be expelled during a woman’s period without a woman even knowing that she might have had the potential blastocyst in her. Therefore, any period could potentially be a miscarriage without knowledge. I would certainly hate for any of my fellow Hoosier women to be at risk of penalty if they do not “properly dispose” of this or report it,” she wrote. “Just to cover our bases, perhaps we should make sure to contact Governor Pence’s office to report our periods. We wouldn’t want him thinking that THOUSANDS OF HOOSIER WOMEN A DAY are trying to hide anything, would we? We can ALL CALL HIM AT 317-232-4567. REPORT THOSE PERIODS! You should really let him know, since he’s so concerned. It will only take a few minutes of your day, but it lets them face an undue and unjust burden, for a change!

I would love to hear about your calls–please post how it goes!”

Now the pissed-off women of Indiana are trolling Governor Pence by calling his office to report their periods. One woman even said that the receptionist told her to stop calling, even though it was the first time she had made the call. It looks like the Governor’s office originally thought there was just one woman making many calls, when actually it is many angry women expressing their intense displeasure with a hearty dose of humor.

Nearly 17,000 people have liked the Facebook page already, and if just a fraction of those numbers are actually calling Pence to report their periods, I think we can assume they know what’s going on now. It looks like the group has enough support to keep this campaign going all the way to November, when Pence is up for reelection and expected to face a pretty tough battle to keep his seat.