Comment: Ah, I was waiting for this

Amash's statement on it was excellent as well. People who support this bill don't seem to grasp the very important distinction between outcome, intent, and motive. Laws dealing with outcome are typically pretty clean. Laws dealing with intent create gray areas. Laws dealing with motive only, on the other hand, are utterly ridiculous and have no chance of being effective. My analysis from an earlier Facebook discussion on this topic:

Abortion is not wrong because of the motivation. It is wrong because of the intent and the outcome. If destroying a fetus doesn't constitute ending a life, then who cares why it's done, really? But if destroying a fetus DOES constitute ending a life, then I still say who cares why it's done? The outcome of an abortion is known in advance. The premeditated intent is freely admitted by all involved parties. The motive behind the intent is completely irrelevant to the morality of the action.

This law is the proverbial toll booth in the middle of the desert from Blazing Saddles. It is a very minor limitation with no real teeth, easily avoided by anyone who wants to.

If that was all there was to it, it would be ineffective but not otherwise bad. However, it also codifies the problematic governmental assumption that they can not only identify internal motives (extremely dubious) but also punish certain actions NOT based only on whether you actually did it, and NOT based on what you were demonstrably trying to do, but instead based on WHY you wanted to do it in the first place. This is extremely dangerous.