There has been broad speculation over Donald Trump’s pick for vice president. Newt Gingrich? Chris Christie? Trump says he won’t announce until Friday, but reports indicate that Indiana Governor Mike Pence is the likely choice.
Speaking of choice, Pence made headlines in April after his office was flooded with phone calls, emails and messages on social media from his female constituents, informing him of the details on their periods.
The reason? Pence signed into law abortion legislation that required miscarried or aborted fetuses to be buried or cremated.
“Periods for Pence,” run by an Indiana woman who has said to local news that she wishes to stay anonymous, started a campaign in response, and created a Facebook page that said the following:
“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. 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?”
Thousands of women contacted the Governor’s office to give detailed accounts of their menstrual cycles and other aspects of their reproductive health, citing the invasive requirements of the law.
On July 7, Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky filed a lawsuit over the controversial law. The suit argues that the law’s requirement that women get an ultrasound at least 18 hours before an abortion procedure represents an undue burden. The lawsuit came very shortly after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling against Texas HB 2, citing that the state’s provisions presented an undue burden onto women’s ability to obtain an abortion. A district judge granted Planned Parenthood’s request for a temporary injunction on the law, which blocked parts of it from going into effect.
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