Commentary

The Senate State Affairs yesterday gave approval to the Idaho Unborn Infants Dignity Act (SB1404), sending it to the Senate floor for some last technical tweaks.

Sen. Cliff Bayer opened presentation for the bill by discussing the profound ethical challenges faced by medical researchers in using fetal tissue harvested from aborted babies.

“I am proud to be the Senate sponsor of this legislation because it sends a powerful message to the culture and the scientific community,” Sen. Bayer told committee members. “We must learn from history and realize that we are living at a time in which clear ethical standards on proper medical research appear to be eroding.  Rather than inhibiting medical and biological research efforts in Idaho, I believe passage of this legislation could easily turn Idaho into a kind of mecca for researchers who want to be assured that they will never have to choose between their careers and their core values.”

SB1404 offers a comprehensive response to the terrible revelations of Planned Parenthood officials negotiating with investigative reporters for the sale of aborted baby parts in videos released by the Center for Medical Progress. The legislation was developed with help from Americans United for Life.

The legislation would make it clear that parents who lose babies to miscarriage or stillbirth have a right to direct the final disposition of their baby’s remains; it provides for a death certificate in cases of miscarriage; it bans the “donation” of organs and tissues from babies destroyed by elective abortion and it would make it a crime to conduct experiments using tissue or organs harvested from aborted babies. The bill specifically includes embryonic stem cells.

Incredibly, both the ACLU and Planned Parenthood showed up to testify against the legislation.

Planned Parenthood of Idaho has claimed that they do not harvest organs and tissue from aborted babies in the state. And yet, they have vigorously fought implementation of a ban.  They claimed that SB1404 was “bad medicine, bad science” and improperly interfered with the doctor-patient relationship.

One can only conclude that either they are deceiving people about their current practices, or have plans to sell baby parts in the future.

The legislation now goes to the Senate amending order, where it is expected that Senate Democrats will wage an effort to strike language in the bill affirming that preborn children lost to abortion deserve to be treated with the same respect as other deceased human beings.

We urge you to contact your state senators in coming days to urge passage of this historic bill.