Panel Oks Abortion Bill For Vote Opponents Say ‘Partial-Birth’ Ban May Also Forbid Other Procedures

Legislation to ban so-called partial-birth abortions won a House committee’s backing Tuesday, but opponents warned that it could outlaw far more than just those procedures.

“The definition of the banned procedure is very unclear,” Glenn Weyhrich, a Boise obstetrician-gynecologist, told the House State Affairs Committee. “It is so vague as to include many procedures, including the most common method of second-trimester abortion.”

The abortion procedure described by the bill’s backers is “abhorrent, probably unsafe, and possibly even prohibited by current law in our state,” said Rep. Margaret Henbest, D-Boise, a committee member who is also a nurse practitioner.

But, she said, “Even though we can maybe all agree that this is a procedure we would just as soon outlaw in this state, I am not convinced that this legislation accomplishes that.”

The committee heard more than two hours of wrenching testimony Tuesday before voting 17-4 to approve the bill. North Idaho Reps. Jeff Alltus, R-Hayden, and Jim Stoicheff, D-Sandpoint, voted in favor. Rep. June Judd, D-St. Maries, was opposed.

“It was all very emotional on both sides,” Judd said afterward. “There were some tears on some people’s part, agonizing over the vote.”

Said Alltus: “I think there was a lot of information put out by credible people, some pretty passionate.”

A Boise woman told the committee of her high school friend who committed suicide because of an unwanted pregnancy. Another told of how she had used genetic testing and two abortions to avoid having a second child with a severe and fatal congenital abnormality and was able to have three more healthy children.

An Ohio nurse, among several people from outside the state who testified, reduced some in the audience to tears with her description of abortions she witnessed, demonstrating with forceps and a rubber model of a cervix.

A Washington, D.C., woman told of learning that her unborn child had no brain, and of her and her husband’s decision to use the partial-birth technique so the fetus would be intact and could be held, baptized and buried.

Rep. Bill Deal, R-Nampa, said he talked to several doctors about the legislation, and they said it didn’t appear to narrow things down to the specific procedure, which he identified as D and X, or dilation and extraction.

Rep. Dan Mader, R-Genesee, the bill’s main House sponsor, said, “I believe there is not a current standing medical definition of a partial-birth abortion, and I think that’s because nobody envisioned that this would ever be an accepted medical practice. There just isn’t a medical definition for it.”

The bill defines the technique as: “Deliberately and intentionally delivering into the vagina a living fetus, or a substantial portion of the fetus, for the purpose of performing a procedure the physician knows will kill the fetus, and which kills the fetus.”

Weyhrich said that could be read to apply to any abortion, including common suction techniques. Those techniques also remove the fetus via the vagina.

“The thing is, I can’t guarantee a fetus is totally dead before any part of it enters the vagina,” he said. “I think the courts have repeatedly struck down this bill because the definition is so vague.”

Idaho Attorney General Al Lance, in an opinion issued Jan. 26, said partial-birth abortion bans have been overturned as unconstitutional in other states, “primarily on the ground that a woman cannot be required to use a different and potentially riskier procedure.” Lance said Idaho is joining with other states in calling for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on an Ohio case to get a definitive answer.

John Keenan, an attorney representing Right to Life of Idaho, said he disagrees with Lance.

“This procedure alone is so abhorrent that I believe its prohibition is constitutional,” Keenan said.

Dirk Carlson, a Boise obstetrician-gynecologist and representative of the Physicians Ad hoc Coalition for Truth, said, “There are other known, safer options.”

Carlson, who said he has never performed an abortion, disagreed with Weyhrich on whether the bill was appropriate.

“There is never a reason for this procedure, as narrowly defined in this bill,” he said.

Kerry Uhlenkott, legislative coordinator for Right to Life of Idaho, said, “This is a hideous procedure in which a child who is in the process of being born is brutally killed with a surgical scissors. It is a procedure that is much closer to infanticide than abortion.”

Brenda Pratt Shafer, the Ohio nurse, said, “I saw that baby go limp. That’s a scene I’ll never forget.”

“Twenty-five years ago we legislated murder. We gave it a new name: choice,” she said.

Much of the testimony revolved around descriptions of the abortion procedure as performed by Shafer’s one-time employer in Ohio. Both doctors who testified, while they were on opposite sides, said they had not heard of the procedure ever being performed in Idaho.

Said Mader: “It is not uncommon for us to pass laws to keep something from happening in our state. … We need a ban on this procedure today, before any or any more children suffer this fate.”

The bill’s only exception is to save the life of the mother. It allows the father or other relatives to sue for damages if partial-birth abortions are performed and imposes both felony charges and civil penalties on doctors who perform them.

Doctors found in violation of the measure would face two to five years in prison.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: WHAT’S NEXT The bill now moves to the full House for a vote. To become law, it also would need approval by the Senate and the governor’s signature.