Abortion Bill Introduced In Legislature Idaho Family Forum Says Its Time Has Come

Moments after winning introduction of the Idaho Family Forum’s sweeping abortion legislation Tuesday, director Dennis Mansfield gleefully predicted that his organization’s legislative agenda will gain new acceptance.

“We’ve been told for eight years that the social issues really are not important,” Mansfield said. “There were people who saw our bills and kicked their feet up on the desk and went to sleep.”

But Mansfield said the abortion debate is changing that.

“People are standing up and saying, ‘Yeah, my constituency does care about this.”’ For the past two years, the Family Forum, a conservative Christian group, has proposed an ambitious package of legislation from tax credits for families who don’t send their children to public schools to measures aimed at weakening teachers unions to anti-abortion bills. None has passed.

“I think it’s a new season of players,” Mansfield said. “Moms and dads are standing up.”

The group’s anti-abortion bill won introduction on an 18-1 vote, with Rep. Ruby Stone, R-Boise, objecting.

But Stone made her objections loud and clear.

“I checked with the medical association, the hospital association and a doctor, and they said there is no case on record where a man has conceived or given birth. … So you men will never know exactly what a woman goes through.”

She said she thinks the Family Forum’s bill would push young women to “go out in an alley and use a coat hanger” and questioned how the bill’s requirements for a second doctor to be present at certain abortions would affect a woman suffering complications surrounding a miscarriage.

“Are we going to let that patient lie there on the table and die?” she asked.

“Absolutely not,” responded Barry Peters, attorney for the Family Forum and the chief author of the bill. “We are not attempting to push anyone into back alleys. We are attempting to make sure that the mother of the child receives the best medical care possible.”

Stone said she also believed the bill crossed the line that should separate church and state.

“I don’t believe that a fetus is viable until it can breathe on its own, and I can give you some inscriptions in the Bible that so state,” she said.

Stone said her late husband flew 71 missions in World War II to protect freedom. “We were supposed to have freedom of religion or freedom from religion, whichever we choose,” she said. “You’re trying to take away that freedom.”

Mansfield disputed that after the House State Affairs Committee meeting.

“We don’t have freedom from religion, we have freedom of religion,” he said. “She’s asking that anybody from a faith-based perspective stay out of the debate, and that’s wrong.”

Mansfield said that if Stone’s constituents knew she opposed legislation banning so-called “partial-birth” abortions, “they’d be aghast.”

Rep. Jeff Alltus, R-Coeur d’Alene, is one of the main sponsors of the Family Forum bill. He said Tuesday that he’s been buttonholing fellow legislators to finalize a list of co-sponsors, and has gotten commitments from about 17.

“I haven’t talked to one person yet who’s said … that they’re not going to support the bill,” Alltus said. “How do you argue against it? Do you argue you want our law to be unconstitutional?”

Mansfield has been promising for more than a week to release a list of more than two dozen co-sponsors. On Tuesday, he said he’s delayed that until the bill comes up for a full hearing, which likely will be Feb. 12 or 13.

Opponents of the Family Forum bill say the argument that the legislation fixes constitutional problems in Idaho’s law is a “smokescreen.”

“It’s still as loaded as it was,” said Jen Ray of the Idaho Women’s Network. “This whole debate about the constitutionality is just a smokescreen for passing punitive and restrictive abortion legislation.”

The version of the Family Forum bill introduced Tuesday includes changes in response to an Idaho attorney general’s opinion that looked at constitutional problems in both Idaho’s current abortion laws and the proposed legislation. But the sponsors left in several sections that raised constitutional questions, according to Attorney General Al Lance.

Peters said the legislation might stop some abortions because of its parental-consent clause, but he said the addition of a third-trimester health exception could lead to more abortions.

“Sure, it’s likely to,” Peters said. “But nevertheless, Attorney General Lance has said this is a problem with our statute, so we’re here to fix the statute. Definitely, it’s ground that we would rather not have given up.”

Mary Kelly McColl, head of Planned Parenthood of Idaho, said, “If you can escape 20 years without having a court battle over a significant piece of Idaho Code, then it doesn’t seem broken to me.”

, DataTimes MEMO: Two sidebars appeared with the story: 1. ABORTION BILLS Three pieces of abortion legislation are being considered by the Idaho Legislature: A ban on so-called “partial-birth” abortions, sponsored by Right to Life of Idaho, was introduced Friday and will be the subject of a public hearing Tuesday before the House State Affairs Committee. The Idaho Family Forum’s package of legislative changes was introduced Tuesday. A bill sponsored by House Speaker Mike Simpson and the Idaho Christian Coalition to strengthen parental consent requirements will be considered for introduction Thursday in the House State Affairs Committee. Its hearing tentatively has been set for Feb. 16.

2. ABORTION BILL Here’s what the Family Forum bill would do: Add a narrowly drawn exception to Idaho’s ban on third-trimester abortions to “prevent the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the woman,” or to prevent permanent mental or emotional harm that “has manifested itself in a substantial impairment of a major bodily function.” That ban now includes exceptions only to save the mother’s life, or when the fetus won’t survive. Allows second-trimester abortions to be performed in outpatient surgical centers rather than just in hospitals. The attorney general said the current hospitalization requirement is unconstitutional. Makes it illegal for anyone other than a physician to perform an abortion. Adds misdemeanor penalties and professional sanctions for doctors who don’t supply women with graphic information about abortion 24 hours before the operation. Current law requires the doctors to provide that information. Changes Idaho’s parental notification law to a stronger, one-parent consent requirement. A court could intervene; any such court proceedings would be secret. Adds a long series of duties for doctors, including determining viability, taking tissue samples, and having a second doctor present to care for the fetus if it the abortion is performed when the fetus is viable. Misdemeanor penalties and professional sanctions would apply to doctors if they or their assistants don’t comply. Adds extensive reporting requirements identifying the doctors, referring agencies, the facility where the abortion is performed, the woman’s age, county of residence and marital status, her prior pregnancies and abortions, viability and gestational age of the fetus along with test results to back those up, type of procedure, date, the woman’s pre-existing medical conditions, the basis for the doctor’s medical judgments, and weight of the fetus. Again, misdemeanor penalties and professional sanctions would apply to doctors if they or their assistants don’t comply.