House Likely To Modify Abortion Bill Measure Gets Past Committee, But Even Its Sponsors Plan To Add Amendments

Sweeping abortion legislation being pushed by a conservative Christian political group is so flawed that even its sponsors want it amended.

But the legislation still received support from the House State Affairs Committee, which voted to move the bill along to the full House for amendments after a three-hour hearing Wednesday.

Rep. Bill Sali, R-Meridian, one of the bill’s sponsors, told the committee the measure needs to be amended to fix two conflicting sections on fetal viability.

But when a bill goes up for amendments in the House, any amendment can be proposed.

House Majority Leader Bruce Newcomb said, “I don’t know but I would suspect that there will be all kinds of amendments.”

North Idaho Reps. Jeff Alltus, R-Hayden, and Jim Stoicheff, D-Sandpoint, voted against a motion to kill the bill. Rep. June Judd, D-St. Maries, voted to kill it.

Judd said the sponsors told the committee it wouldn’t change much in Idaho. “So why are we going through this?” she asked.

Judd said she also worried that the bill gave doctors little leeway when faced with emergency situations, and that the judicial bypass procedure was inadequate. That procedure, which calls for seeking a judge’s order, is the bill’s only option for a minor to get an abortion if the minor’s parent won’t consent.

The bill has no exception for minors who are the victims of incest.

The committee heard strong testimony on both sides of the parental-consent issue. A woman who had an abortion at the age of 16 told lawmakers, “Going before a judge in Burley, Idaho, you might as well just stand on a rooftop and shout that you’re pregnant at 16.”

Another woman whose 16-year-old daughter recently had an abortion against her mother’s wishes, told lawmakers tearfully, “For any other medical procedure she needs my consent, even getting her ears pierced.”

The parental consent requirement is just one of many sections in the large bill, which seeks to add to Idaho law various restrictions that have been upheld in courts in other states. The measure also includes some changes to Idaho law designed to bring it into compliance with constitutional requirements.

Attorney General Al Lance, in a Jan. 26 legal opinion, identified constitutional problems with several sections of the bill.

Sali told the committee, “If it were up to me, I would prefer that there be no abortions in Idaho, whether it was a legal procedure or not. This bill does not do that.”

Sali argued that because Idaho law has some sections that have been identified as constitutionally questionable, Idaho effectively has no abortion law.

But Newcomb, R-Burley, noted that laws are presumed constitutional until they’re challenged, and Idaho’s hasn’t been challenged.

Mike Schwarzkopf, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the committee was being hypocritical in suggesting that the Family Forum-backed legislation was a constitutional “fix,” one day after it approved a ban on so-called partialbirth abortions that clearly is unconstitutional.

Lance noted in his opinion that similar bills have been overturned in other states, and suggested Idaho wait for a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court before acting.

The partial-birth bill calls for prison terms of two to five years for doctors who violate it by performing a particular abortion procedure, but opponents say the bill’s definition of the procedure is so vague that it could apply to virtually any abortion procedure.

Schwarzkopf angered members Wednesday when he said, “Does anybody find it hypocritical that today we’re talking about the Constitution, when yesterday nobody cared?”

The Family Forum-backed legislation also is unconstitutional, he argued. Although the pieces it collected from other states may be court-tested on their own, when taken together they constitute an “undue burden” on a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion.

“It’s as if you threw out the pieces of six jigsaw puzzles, and put them all together and expected them to come out like the picture that’s on one of the boxes. It doesn’t happen like that.”

Schwarzkopf also said the exception the bill would add to Idaho law, to allow third-trimester abortions when the woman’s health is endangered, is unconstitutionally narrow. The bill’s sponsors said they added the exception only because Lance said Idaho’s law needed one to meet constitutional muster.

But some committee members expressed concern that adding the exception would allow more abortions. Idaho law allows third-trimester abortions only to save the mother’s life or when the fetus won’t survive.

The bill would impose extensive new reporting requirements and duties on doctors that Lance said raise constitutional questions.

Last week, the Idaho Family Forum released a poll of 602 registered voters in Idaho that found 59 percent in favor of “a bill to bring Idaho law into compliance with U.S. Supreme Court tested and approved restrictions.”

, DataTimes