IIS and ASP: If blocks that span multiple code blocks

I was wondering if there's any way to support this style of coding in ASP/Python.

This works in VBScript (but I'm trying to remove all my VBScript), but I seem to be getting hit by the fact that each block of code is being analyzed as a single block of code and the "if" not being able to span multiple code blocks.

#VBScript
<%
If This = "THAT" Then
    Response.Write("BEFORE")
%>
    This does == THAT<BR>
    <!-- #include virtual="/inc/whatever.vbscriptincludefile" -->
<%
    Response.Write("AFTER<BR>")
End If
%>

What I am trying to show you is that in VBScript, an IF block can span the multiple code regions (<% code %>) and conditionally display the HTML in between the IF and END IF if the condition matches

Note that in VBScript if This = "THAT", this VBScript would display:

BEFORE<BR>
This does == THAT<BR>
 *** whatever the include file displayed 
AFTER<BR>

And of course, if This <> "THAT" it wouldn't display anything from above!

However in Python, and a similarly structured code-block:

#Python
<%
if This == "THAT":
    Response.Write("BEFORE<BR>")
%>
    This does == THAT<BR>
    <!-- #include virtual="/inc/whatever.pythonincludefile" -->
<%
Response.Write("AFTER<BR>")
%>

In python, We would get (if This == "THAT"):

BEFORE
This does == THAT<BR>
 *** and whatever the include file displayed (if the include file had no additional logic to filter the data)
AFTER<BR>

However, in python, we would get (if This != "THAT"):

This does == THAT<BR>
 *** and whatever the include file displayed (if the include file had no additional logic to filter the data)
AFTER<BR>

Lastly, if I indent the Response.Write("AFTER<BR>") in this second code block to try and span the code block to the same conditional started in the first code block, I get a syntax error like this:

unexpected indent
/folder/somefile.asp, line ###
    Response.Write("AFTER<BR>")
---^

is there any way around this without doing a lot of other if blocks in each section of <% code %>

It sounds like an RFE to me (and probably not an easy one), but maybe I'm missing something?

IIS on W2016 (most recent patches)
Activestate Python: 3.8.2
pywin32==227

Please and Thank You,
Steven