Indiana Catholic Conference Reports Legislative Successes

            Indianapolis— The Indiana Catholic worked to promote the consistent-life ethic and the common good during the 2015 session of the Indiana General Assembly, which adjourned during the final week of April.

            ICC Executive Director Glenn Tebbe, who serves as the chief lobbyist and spokesperson for the Catholic Church in Indiana, said his efforts of bringing the church’s teaching of the consistent-life ethic and the common good to the Statehouse took many forms this year.

            According to Tebbe, the consistent-life ethic encompasses a comprehensive pro-life message that goes beyond the traditional sense of being exclusively anti-abortion. “The consistent-life ethic reaches the whole person from conception to natural death and all the stages in between,” Tebbe said. “Within this consistent-life ethic, the ICC works to forward it though the legislative channels.”

            The ICC marked dozens of bills as priorities. The following are some of the ICC’s legislative successes.

• Legislation to allow growth in availability for school choice scholarship opportunities passed in the state budget bill, HB 1001. The school choice expansion allows more students from lower to moderate income families the choice to attend a public or private school of the parents’ choice. Tebbe said the expansion came in the form of an increase in the threshold for the scholarship tax credit program which allows donors who give to privately-funded scholarships through a Scholarship Granting Organization to get a tax credit.
• The ICC supported the original Religious Freedom Restoration Act, commonly referred to as RFRA. “Unfortunately,” Tebbe said, “the debate became so factually distorted that the intent of the legislation became lost in the controversy of whether it was discriminatory.” According to Tebbe, due to misperceptions of RFRA, lawmakers were compelled to amend it to demonstrate that discrimination would not take place. “While discrimination was neither the intent nor the legal application of existing RFRA’s across the country for 20 years,” Tebbe explained, “it is still unclear if the new RFRA language, which Indiana lawmakers adopted, will provide religious liberty in its application or practice as it relates to the free exercise of religion. Unlike the original RFRA language, the new RFRA language has not been tested or applied. While the ICC is supportive of the principle of religious freedom, it is unclear at this point if Indiana’s new law will accomplish its intended goal.”
• The ICC supported legislation to protect the unborn and those in infancy. Legislation passed to expand Indiana’s safe-haven law.  The newborn-incubator bill, HB 1016, aims to help reduce infant mortality by expanding the safe-haven law through creating baby drop boxes for mothers to surrender their unwanted babies, rather than abandoning them in unsafe conditions.
• Lawmakers also passed HB 1093, which creates resources through the Indiana Department of Health for parents who get a pre-born diagnosis of a disabled child, thus providing parents needed information and support systems to carry the child to term rather than aborting the child.
• Pre-born infants will benefit from legislation, dubbed the safety pin bill, HB 1004, which passed. The bill helps provide funding for better prenatal care for low-income families.
• The RU 486 clarification bill, SB 546, which passed, allows for regulation of the drug to take place after it was held up in court last year.
• The human-egg-transfer bill (SB 208), which aimed to expand the use of human eggs from out of state entities, was opposed by the ICC, and was defeated.             
• In the area of death and dying, the ICC opposed two bills that would have allowed human remains to be dissolved through the alkaline hydrolysis process after death. “The ICC opposed the bills because the process of dissolving the body and having it run down into the sewer system was not deemed a respectful way to dispose of a human being,” Tebbe said. The bill was defeated.
• The aborted-fetal-remains bill passed. The legislation, SB 329, recognized the right of a woman who has an abortion to direct the final disposal (including a proper burial) of the remains of her aborted fetus.
• While the ICC supported a bill to ban the death penalty, the bill did not get a hearing this year and died.
• The ICC also supported a bill to increase the Earned Income Tax Credit to help families. While provisions of the EITC passed in the House, agreement could not be made during the conference committee phase, and the legislation died. Tebbe said he expects a version of the EITC to return again next year and will continue to work toward its passage.

            To view the details of legislative action and bill summaries in the final days of the Indiana General Assembly go to www.indianacc.org.