Abortion: "The number of unintended pregnancies has fallen in America as the use of contraceptives has spread, particularly among young people."

A current factoid about abortion, followed by a column repeat.

The Economist explains: Why the number of abortions in America is at a historic low

The drop is particularly pronounced among teenagers

Abortions are now at their lowest numbers since the passage in 1973 of Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court’s ruling that declared abortion a constitutional right. The drop can be seen in all age groups, but is especially pronounced among teenagers. From 2006 to 2015, the abortion rate for 15- to 19-year-olds more than halved. The report also showed that abortions are being performed earlier in pregnancy, and therefore more safely. The percentage performed during the first six weeks of gestation rose by 11%.

The reasons for these changing numbers offer grounds for hope. As has happened across the developed world, the number of unintended pregnancies has fallen in America as the use of contraceptives has spread, particularly among young people ...

This column was published in March of 2016. I've left the introduction intact.

---

ON THE AVENUES: Abortion? Wichita, or maybe Targu Mures.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

This column originally was published in 2010, and repeated four years ago after the primary election. In my 2012 opening remarks, I noted the irony attendant in Indiana's “Democratic” party nominating John Gregg for governor.

Not only is Gregg noted for his anti-abortion stance, but at the time, he'd made public his opposition to equal marriage rights in Indiana. Gregg came closer than expected in a losing effort against the abysmal Mike Pence, who recently signed legislation further restricting abortion rights in a state where it's already under onerous siege. The Des Moines Register gets it:

Over the years, anti-choice activists have successfully convinced policymakers to restrict access to abortion, to inconvenience or humiliate women, and to discourage medical professionals from providing the outpatient procedure. But the Indiana law is in a league of absurdity all its own.

Indiana's Democrats are too intellectually flaccid to deserve my 2016 vote against Pence, but I'm likely to cast it anyway. I trust we'll have a Libertarian. In the meantime, here's the reprise.

---

May 24, 2012

In January, 2010, Scott Roeder went on trial in Wichita, Kansas and was convicted of murdering Dr. George Tiller during a church service in May, 2009. Roeder methodically stalked and killed Tiller because the doctor was an “abortionist” – just like John Irving’s fictional Dr. Wilbur Larch in Cider House Rules, although Tiller’s life ended somewhat more suddenly, and far less whimsically, than Larch’s.

When I hear the word “abortion,” I think about the dingy gray apartment blocks in Bucharest, capital of Romania. It is probable that few readers will have the same reaction, so kindly permit me to explain.

Romania’s 20th-century history was decidedly turbulent. Its pro-fascist leaders entered the Second World War on the German side, mimicking their Nazi overlords by expelling, and later savagely murdering, native Jewish and Gypsy populations. Romania volunteered troops for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, but when the fortunes of war reversed, the country lay squarely in the path of the Communist military steamroller as it drove westward.

The Kremlin fiddled, and Romania danced. As a Soviet client state during the decades that followed, Romania’s socioeconomic ideology mirrored that of the USSR’s. Consumer goods were not a priority, and contraceptives generally could not be obtained. However, as in the Soviet Union, abortion was perfectly legal, readily available and absurdly cheap. Some estimates suggest that there were four abortions for every live birth in Romania by the year 1966.

Meanwhile, by the mid-1960’s, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had consolidated power, embarking upon a quarter-century reign of thuggish oppression, personal megalomania and sheer doltishness noteworthy even by rock-bottom Warsaw Pact standards.

Accordingly, Ceausescu decreed abortion illegal in 1967, a change that occurred over night, without warning. Apparently the self-described “Genius of the Carpathians” had determined that Romania’s population needed to be increased, and a ban on both contraceptives and abortion would help achieve his aim – not that any thought had been given on feeding the extra mouths, or how they would be educated and employed, or where they would live.

Ceausescu’s abortion ban had the abrupt, short term effect of doubling the birth rate, but this spike was not accompanied by commensurate gains in material living standards. Romanians managed to adapt, and a steady decline in births commenced, to the point that some twenty years later, the country’s population had ceased to grow at all.

Black market contraceptives were one factor in the birth rate’s fall. Another development was more lethal in its effect, because the only Romanian population statistic that steadily increased during the years following the anti-abortion decree of 1967 was the country’s maternal mortality rate, which cruelly tripled. The likeliest explanation is that those women dying from the effects of botched, illegal abortions were included with statistics documenting those who had died during childbirth.

Until Ceausescu’s long overdue toppling and immediate execution in 1989, the Romanian governmental bureaucracy actively intervened in the sex lives of the country’s citizens, sating the dictator’s psychotic desire that greater numbers of New Communist men and women be created to man the steadily decaying ramparts of a collapsing society. Ceausescu’s motivation was purely secular, although it just as easily might have been religious. Either way, the effects would have been just as damning.

“Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days,” available through Netflix, is a harrowing and compelling Romanian film that tells the story of a university student’s illegal abortion in the year 1987. It is reality at its grittiest, and not an easy movie to watch. There are no flatulence jokes, car crashes, gun battles, transformers or “Sex in the City” romantic escapism.

I shan’t reveal the plot, which is eloquent in its simplicity, but it bears repeating that the film’s action takes place against a stifling backdrop of sanctioned, stifling fanaticism, in this instance big government’s punitive intrusion into the lives of ordinary people. In 1987, as for twenty years before, all parties involved in transacting an illegal abortion faced lengthy jail terms if caught. In addition to the threat of maiming and even death, a Romanian woman who in the enforced absence of legal contraceptives sought to terminate a pregnancy could be imprisoned and her career – her very life – irreparably ruined.

There may be little outside of cynical Cold War politics and a certain dollop of regional backwardness to justify the dismal record of tin pots like Nicolae Ceausescu, and yet there exists a minority among us, right here in America, some resplendent in their gated communities, others with no worldly possessions, but irrespective of station, possessed of a fervent belief that leaden control must be exercised over the individual’s reproductive freedom.

If asked, at least some among this minority would advocate the imposition in America of the semi-literate Romanian strongman’s solution: A complete ban on abortion, and whatever expansion of a police state is necessary to universally enforce it.

There are still others – a tiny handful, perhaps including the convicted murderer Scott Roeder – advancing purely terroristic violence as a means of curbing a practice that they decry in precisely the same terms, which may be an eye for an eye, but makes little sense from the “prince of peace” religious standpoint in Christianity. That’s enduringly frightening to me.

Speaking only for myself, no single issue better illustrates the struggle for equality on the part of fully half the world’s population than the right of reproductive choice for women. While a woman’s freedom to choose the option of abortion may well represent the extreme component of reproductive choice, one surely capable of being reduced in frequency with continued education and access to contraception, a clear majority of Americans believe that it should remain just such a legalized, regulated, and defined option.

What happened in Romania (for that matter, in Kansas) should not happen in America.

Should it?

WITHIN CITY LIMITS: Episode IX, The Nineties Are Calling ... They Want Their Politicians Back.

Within City Limits

Episode IX, The Nineties Are Calling ... They Want Their Politicians Back.

By Nick Vaughn, Guest Columnist

With Evan Bayh announcing he is seeking his old senate seat and Hillary Clinton being endorsed by Bernie Sanders, I felt like a baby again. Being born in 1997, I am only familiar with the political landscape by looking backwards, something Democrats are never advocating -- until now.

When President Obama was running for President and reelection, he had the slogans of “Forward” and “Progress,” but today's Democratic Party is running on nostalgia and backwardness. You can argue with me about platform points and “evolving on issues” like gay marriage, but the bottom line is that these politicians who are the standard bearers for the Democratic Party nationally and on an Indiana state level are still the same politicians who were the standard bearers in the 1990s.

The top three candidates on the Democratic ticket in Indiana are all rehashes from a bygone era where the state's economy was in the toilet, brought on by large deficits and high taxes. We looked a lot like Illinois back then. Hillary Clinton, John Gregg, Evan Bayh; all rehashes. While their talking points are much different than they were back then, they are still the same people. 1990s politicians should not be the ones solving the problems of the 2000s and beyond.

Beyond my displeasure and discontent with the rehashing of candidates, all three represent special interests, Wall Street, and back room politics at their absolute worst. John Gregg is still taking advantage of the state’s healthcare for elected officials being paid by the taxpayers, a practice that has ended. Furthermore, Gregg was a lawyer for the Bingham McHale law firm, where lobbying records show he was a well connected lobbyist for various topics. You can read more about his lobbying here: Gregg's lobbying record doesn't worry Democrats.

Evan Bayh used to be a public servant until he decided to retire from the U.S. Senate to take a lobbying job. Bayh epitomizes what is wrong with Washington, D.C. He went there as a senator and cashed in on the special interest money by fighting the laws he helped pass (including Obamacare). Plus Bayh just recently moved back to Indiana. He had previously lived in DC in a $2.9 million dollar home and had a modest vacation home in Florida worth over $3 million.

Bayh saying he will represent everyday Hoosiers might be the biggest lie of the campaign season. He is out of touch and filled to the brim with special interest money. Read more about Bayh the Lobbyist here: Lobbyist Evan Bayh Lit On Fire By The Left and here Evan Bayh Won’t Rule Out Becoming A Lobbyist After His Term Ends.

Hillary Clinton. Well, enough said.

So that I get my point across, I think it is inherently hypocritical and ironic that the Democrats have long been the party of vilifying the rich and lobbying class that infests Washington, D.C. and Indianapolis, yet all three of their candidates at the top of the ticket have deep ties to Wall Street, special interest money, and lobbying. For Pete’s sake, two of them are former lobbyists! Not to mention all three are rehashed candidates of a bygone era.

My question is: will the people of Indiana hold these three accountable? Or will they be fooled by the talking points? Also, do the Democrats who reject the Wall Street, special interest, and lobbying culture of Washington, D.C. and Indianapolis hold their nose and vote for three candidates who epitomize what is wrong with our system of government? Or will they stand for what they believe in and hold their party and their candidates accountable?

And as always, I leave you with the quote of the day: “In 2005, the progressive watchdog group Public Citizen reported that 43 percent of the members (of Congress) who retired from 1998 to 2004 registered as lobbyists.” -- Huffington Post

John Gregg undergoes a pre-election LGBT conversion.

In a recent article about John Gregg's evolution since 2012, online.com/news/opinion/commentary-john-gregg-mike-pence-and-a-locked-steering-wheel/article_723b88c4-c99f-11e5-b0ed-dbbe112fc955.html">John Krull offered this quote: "You shouldn’t lock the steering wheel in life, because the road does bend."

There's a reserved seat for Mike Pence in dustbin of history, and yet I still need convincing about Gregg. In 2012, he came off as exactly the sort of  non-Democratic Faux Democrat we've learned from experience to loathe here in Floyd County.

We'll see.

A one-on-one with the Indiana Democrat looking to take down Mike Pence, by By Rick Sutton (The Word, via NUVO)

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The Word, central Indiana's LGBT monthly publication, is paying close attention to the 2016 election cycle. The Word's Political Editor, Rick Sutton, sat down with Indiana Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Gregg for a recent interview, which is featured in the April issue. A similar interview or guest column has been requested of incumbent Republican Gov. Mike Pence. That request remains open. NUVO will reprint that interview or column, if it ever happens.]

Former Indiana House Speaker John Gregg is the Democratic nominee for governor. It's his second try — in 2012, his campaign ran afoul of the LGBT community for divisive statements regarding Indiana's then-pending Constitutional amendment on marriage.


After that hard-fought but losing campaign, Gregg considered his options and decided to seek the state's top job in 2016. As part of that process, one of his major considerations was LGBT civil rights —and he arrived at different conclusions than his 2012 campaign proclaimed.

ON THE AVENUES: Abortion? Wichita, or maybe Targu Mures.

ON THE AVENUES: Abortion? Wichita, or maybe Targu Mures.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

This column originally was published in 2010, and repeated four years ago after the primary election. In my 2012 opening remarks, I noted the irony attendant in Indiana's “Democratic” party nominating John Gregg for governor.

Not only is Gregg noted for his anti-abortion stance, but at the time, he'd made public his opposition to equal marriage rights in Indiana. Gregg came closer than expected in a losing effort against the abysmal Mike Pence, who recently signed legislation further restricting abortion rights in a state where it's already under onerous siege. The Des Moines Register gets it:

Over the years, anti-choice activists have successfully convinced policymakers to restrict access to abortion, to inconvenience or humiliate women, and to discourage medical professionals from providing the outpatient procedure. But the Indiana law is in a league of absurdity all its own.

Indiana's Democrats are too intellectually flaccid to deserve my 2016 vote against Pence, but I'm likely to cast it anyway. I trust we'll have a Libertarian. In the meantime, here's the reprise.

---

May 24, 2012

In January, 2010, Scott Roeder went on trial in Wichita, Kansas and was convicted of murdering Dr. George Tiller during a church service in May, 2009. Roeder methodically stalked and killed Tiller because the doctor was an “abortionist” – just like John Irving’s fictional Dr. Wilbur Larch in Cider House Rules, although Tiller’s life ended somewhat more suddenly, and far less whimsically, than Larch’s.

When I hear the word “abortion,” I think about the dingy gray apartment blocks in Bucharest, capital of Romania. It is probable that few readers will have the same reaction, so kindly permit me to explain.

Romania’s 20th-century history was decidedly turbulent. Its pro-fascist leaders entered the Second World War on the German side, mimicking their Nazi overlords by expelling, and later savagely murdering, native Jewish and Gypsy populations. Romania volunteered troops for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, but when the fortunes of war reversed, the country lay squarely in the path of the Communist military steamroller as it drove westward.

The Kremlin fiddled, and Romania danced. As a Soviet client state during the decades that followed, Romania’s socioeconomic ideology mirrored that of the USSR’s. Consumer goods were not a priority, and contraceptives generally could not be obtained. However, as in the Soviet Union, abortion was perfectly legal, readily available and absurdly cheap. Some estimates suggest that there were four abortions for every live birth in Romania by the year 1966.

Meanwhile, by the mid-1960’s, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had consolidated power, embarking upon a quarter-century reign of thuggish oppression, personal megalomania and sheer doltishness noteworthy even by rock-bottom Warsaw Pact standards.

Accordingly, Ceausescu decreed abortion illegal in 1967, a change that occurred over night, without warning. Apparently the self-described “Genius of the Carpathians” had determined that Romania’s population needed to be increased, and a ban on both contraceptives and abortion would help achieve his aim – not that any thought had been given on feeding the extra mouths, or how they would be educated and employed, or where they would live.

Ceausescu’s abortion ban had the abrupt, short term effect of doubling the birth rate, but this spike was not accompanied by commensurate gains in material living standards. Romanians managed to adapt, and a steady decline in births commenced, to the point that some twenty years later, the country’s population had ceased to grow at all.

Black market contraceptives were one factor in the birth rate’s fall. Another development was more lethal in its effect, because the only Romanian population statistic that steadily increased during the years following the anti-abortion decree of 1967 was the country’s maternal mortality rate, which cruelly tripled. The likeliest explanation is that those women dying from the effects of botched, illegal abortions were included with statistics documenting those who had died during childbirth.

Until Ceausescu’s long overdue toppling and immediate execution in 1989, the Romanian governmental bureaucracy actively intervened in the sex lives of the country’s citizens, sating the dictator’s psychotic desire that greater numbers of New Communist men and women be created to man the steadily decaying ramparts of a collapsing society. Ceausescu’s motivation was purely secular, although it just as easily might have been religious. Either way, the effects would have been just as damning.

“Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days,” available through Netflix, is a harrowing and compelling Romanian film that tells the story of a university student’s illegal abortion in the year 1987. It is reality at its grittiest, and not an easy movie to watch. There are no flatulence jokes, car crashes, gun battles, transformers or “Sex in the City” romantic escapism.

I shan’t reveal the plot, which is eloquent in its simplicity, but it bears repeating that the film’s action takes place against a stifling backdrop of sanctioned, stifling fanaticism, in this instance big government’s punitive intrusion into the lives of ordinary people. In 1987, as for twenty years before, all parties involved in transacting an illegal abortion faced lengthy jail terms if caught. In addition to the threat of maiming and even death, a Romanian woman who in the enforced absence of legal contraceptives sought to terminate a pregnancy could be imprisoned and her career – her very life – irreparably ruined.

There may be little outside of cynical Cold War politics and a certain dollop of regional backwardness to justify the dismal record of tin pots like Nicolae Ceausescu, and yet there exists a minority among us, right here in America, some resplendent in their gated communities, others with no worldly possessions, but irrespective of station, possessed of a fervent belief that leaden control must be exercised over the individual’s reproductive freedom.

If asked, at least some among this minority would advocate the imposition in America of the semi-literate Romanian strongman’s solution: A complete ban on abortion, and whatever expansion of a police state is necessary to universally enforce it.

There are still others – a tiny handful, perhaps including the convicted murderer Scott Roeder – advancing purely terroristic violence as a means of curbing a practice that they decry in precisely the same terms, which may be an eye for an eye, but makes little sense from the “prince of peace” religious standpoint in Christianity. That’s enduringly frightening to me.

Speaking only for myself, no single issue better illustrates the struggle for equality on the part of fully half the world’s population than the right of reproductive choice for women. While a woman’s freedom to choose the option of abortion may well represent the extreme component of reproductive choice, one surely capable of being reduced in frequency with continued education and access to contraception, a clear majority of Americans believe that it should remain just such a legalized, regulated, and defined option.

What happened in Romania (for that matter, in Kansas) should not happen in America.

Should it?

---

March 24: ON THE AVENUES: Introducing New Albany Craft Beer Week, May 27 – June 4, 2016.

March 17: ON THE AVENUES: Erin Go Blagh -- a timeless classic for a green-hued holiday.

March 10: ON THE AVENUES: A funny thing happened on the way to a city council nightcap.

March 3: ON THE AVENUES: Since 1960, outside looking in.

ON THE AVENUES: Wichita, or maybe Targu Mures.

ON THE AVENUES: Wichita, or maybe Targu Mures.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Indiana’s euphemistically termed “Democratic” party has nominated John Gregg to seek the office of governor. As running mate, Gregg has chosen Vi Simpson, compelling the News and Tribune reporter to delineate:

Simpson has been a defender of abortion rights, while Gregg has been noted for his anti-abortion stance.

Not only that, but Gregg has made public his opposition to equal marriage rights in Indiana, thus placing him in opposition to the incumbent President from his very own party.

Whether any of this will help him garner support from Indiana Mouth Breathers for Pence has yet to be seen, although it seems highly unlikely. That it will abjectly disillusion leftists like me is fairly obvious, and so be it; I’m hardly a party stalwart.

This week’s column is a repeat. Originally it appeared in the newspaper in January, 2010. I’ve rewritten the first paragraph to reflect the outcome of the Roeder trial. Otherwise, it has not been edited.

---

In January, 2010, Scott Roeder went on trial in Wichita, Kansas and was convicted of murdering Dr. George Tiller during a church service in May, 2009. Roeder methodically stalked and killed Tiller because the doctor was an “abortionist” – just like John Irving’s fictional Dr. Wilbur Larch in Cider House Rules, although Tiller’s life ended somewhat more suddenly, and far less whimsically, than Larch’s.

When I hear the word “abortion,” I think about the dingy gray apartment blocks in Bucharest, capital of Romania. It is probable that few readers will have the same reaction, so kindly permit me to explain.

Romania’s 20th-century history was decidedly turbulent. Its pro-fascist leaders entered the Second World War on the German side, mimicking their Nazi overlords by expelling, and later savagely murdering, native Jewish and Gypsy populations. Romania volunteered troops for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, but when the fortunes of war reversed, the country lay squarely in the path of the Communist military steamroller as it drove westward.

The Kremlin fiddled, and Romania danced. As a Soviet client state during the decades that followed, Romania’s socioeconomic ideology mirrored that of the USSR’s. Consumer goods were not a priority, and contraceptives generally could not be obtained. However, as in the Soviet Union, abortion was perfectly legal, readily available and absurdly cheap. Some estimates suggest that there were four abortions for every live birth in Romania by the year 1966.

Meanwhile, by the mid-1960’s, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had consolidated power, embarking upon a quarter-century reign of thuggish oppression, personal megalomania and sheer doltishness noteworthy even by rock-bottom Warsaw Pact standards.

Accordingly, Ceausescu decreed abortion illegal in 1967, a change that occurred over night, without warning. Apparently the self-described “Genius of the Carpathians” had determined that Romania’s population needed to be increased, and a ban on both contraceptives and abortion would help achieve his aim – not that any thought had been given on feeding the extra mouths, or how they would be educated and employed, or where they would live.

Ceausescu’s abortion ban had the abrupt, short term effect of doubling the birth rate, but this spike was not accompanied by commensurate gains in material living standards. Romanians managed to adapt, and a steady decline in births commenced, to the point that some twenty years later, the country’s population had ceased to grow at all.

Black market contraceptives were one factor in the birth rate’s fall. Another development was more lethal in its effect, because the only Romanian population statistic that steadily increased during the years following the anti-abortion decree of 1967 was the country’s maternal mortality rate, which cruelly tripled. The likeliest explanation is that those women dying from the effects of botched, illegal abortions were included with statistics documenting those who had died during childbirth.

Until Ceausescu’s long overdue toppling and immediate execution in 1989, the Romanian governmental bureaucracy actively intervened in the sex lives of the country’s citizens, sating the dictator’s psychotic desire that greater numbers of New Communist men and women be created to man the steadily decaying ramparts of a collapsing society. Ceausescu’s motivation was purely secular, although it just as easily might have been religious. Either way, the effects would have been just as damning.

“Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days,” available through Netflix, is a harrowing and compelling Romanian film that tells the story of a university student’s illegal abortion in the year 1987. It is reality at its grittiest, and not an easy movie to watch. There are no flatulence jokes, car crashes, gun battles, transformers or “Sex in the City” romantic escapism.

I shan’t reveal the plot, which is eloquent in its simplicity, but it bears repeating that the film’s action takes place against a stifling backdrop of sanctioned, stifling fanaticism, in this instance big government’s punitive intrusion into the lives of ordinary people. In 1987, as for twenty years before, all parties involved in transacting an illegal abortion faced lengthy jail terms if caught. In addition to the threat of maiming and even death, a Romanian woman who in the enforced absence of legal contraceptives sought to terminate a pregnancy could be imprisoned and her career – her very life – irreparably ruined.

There may be little outside of cynical Cold War politics and a certain dollop of regional backwardness to justify the dismal record of tin pots like Nicolae Ceausescu, and yet there exists a minority among us, right here in America, some resplendent in their gated communities, others with no worldly possessions, but irrespective of station, possessed of a fervent belief that leaden control must be exercised over the individual’s reproductive freedom.

If asked, at least some among this minority would advocate the imposition in America of the semi-literate Romanian strongman’s solution: A complete ban on abortion, and whatever expansion of a police state is necessary to universally enforce it.

There are still others – a tiny handful, perhaps including the convicted murderer Scott Roeder – advancing purely terroristic violence as a means of curbing a practice that they decry in precisely the same terms, which may be an eye for an eye, but makes little sense from the “prince of peace” religious standpoint in Christianity. That’s enduringly frightening to me.

Speaking only for myself, no single issue better illustrates the struggle for equality on the part of fully half the world’s population than the right of reproductive choice for women. While a woman’s freedom to choose the option of abortion may well represent the extreme component of reproductive choice, one surely capable of being reduced in frequency with continued education and access to contraception, a clear majority of Americans believe that it should remain just such a legalized, regulated, and defined option.

What happened in Romania (for that matter, in Kansas) should not happen in America.

Should it?

21st Century Schizoid Man.

Let me see if I understand this probable doomsday scenario: The woman with the real Democratic credentials, whom I'd happily vote for, is stuck on the under card. She's yielding her Indiana Senate seat to play second fiddle to the male nominee, who already was significantly wrong on at least three major issues before the primary even was held.

Robert Fripp was right: "Politicians' funeral pyre," indeed.

Given that Gregg now appears to be a Ted Heavrin-style Democrat, at least we don't have Larry McAllister running for Lieutenant Governor. Thank Allah for small favors.

Gregg picks Simpson for Democratic ticket, by Tom LoBianco (Associated Press)

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Gregg is reaching out to his party's base with his pick for lieutenant governor.

Gregg tapped Senate Minority Leader Vi Simpson as his running mate Tuesday. Simpson is giving up the Bloomington Senate seat she's held since 1984 to run with Gregg.

The addition of Simpson, an abortion rights supporter, to the Democratic ticket should shore up support for Gregg among liberal Democrats. It could also open up the wallets of Democratic donors turned off by Gregg's anti-abortion stance and opposition to same-sex marriage.

"Life's too short to dance with ugly men."

That's what a friend of mine's bumper sticker used to say. It's too short to vote for them, too.

Only in Indiana could a matter of conscience turn your electoral attention toward a reality TV refugee.

Indiana Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Favors Constitutional Amendment Banning Same-Sex Marriage by Bil Browning, Huff Post Gay Voices

Flying in the face of the national trend in favor of same-sex marriage, Indiana Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Gregg announced his support of a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages and civil unions on the same day President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage. Gregg's Republican opponent, far-right Congressman Mike Pence, also supports the discriminatory amendment. Libertarian candidate Rupert Boneham, the former Survivor reality show star, has already announced his support of full marriage equality for all Hoosiers.