OPINION: Idaho bill is held in the chairperson’s desk drawer ... for now

Yes: What the Senate State Affairs Committee did was simply vote to introduce a bill, prospectively a massive controversial bill, and that it may go no further, receiving not even a public hearing.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Eight years ago, I wrote about a group called Abolish Abortion Idaho, based at Hayden, whose name reflected the intended goal. (The group’s then-website is no longer active, and I don’t know if the group still is active.) It was trying to land an initiative on the Idaho ballot to make abortions punishable in the same way as murder. It “would set state policy that abortion, any abortion at any stage of development, be prosecuted the same as any heinous serial killer murder you can recall.”

The proposal failed. Some people suggested such an effort would be a bridge too far even for Idaho. I thought: Give it time.

Now, two and a half years into the post-Roe era, we have another test of the proposition in the form of newly minted Senate Bill 1059, proposed by Sen. Brandon Shippy, R-New Plymouth, (co-sponsors are Sens. Joshua Kohl, R-Twin Falls, and Christy Zito, R-Mountain Home, and Rep. Dale Hawkins, R-Fernwood) and introduced with the favorable vote of all State Affairs members save the lone Democrat, James Ruchti, of Pocatello.

The bill is not exactly the same as the 2017 ballot proposal, but the new “Idaho Prenatal Equal Protection Act” does have much the same effect: declaring that (most) abortions are criminal homicides, to the point they should be charged as murder.

At the committee meeting, Shippy’s debate was not practical — he said specifically he wasn’t intending to address any particular medical circumstances — but ideological, when it wasn’t religious. He started his testimony: “I want to preface this by saying that today we know for a fact that our worth and right to life as human beings is not derived from external circumstances or opinions, but from the Imago Dei.” Actually, this is opinion, not fact. (For those not adhering to the correct religious organization and therefore possibly unaware, that refers to the “image of God.”)

Ruchti asked him, “If a woman is pregnant and claims she has had a miscarriage, how does the government determine whether it truly was a miscarriage or an abortion?” Shippy said that such a case should be handled like the death of anyone else.

So, Ruchti said, if there’s a question about how the death happened, that would mean a police-led investigation by the government? Shippy: “Presumably that would be the process.”

And, Ruchti asked, would the bill require a 12-year-old rape or incest victim to carry the pregnancy to term? Shippy’s answer was an implicit yes: “A baby conceived in rape is still equal to you or me.”

Apart from Shippy, no one argued in favor of the bill. It was introduced anyway.

It may never get out of the proverbial chairperson’s desk. The committee chairperson, Jim Guthrie, of McCammon, expressed no enthusiasm for it. Senate President Pro Tem Kelly Anthon, of Burley, who is a committee member, said that while the whole of the Senate Republican caucus (which is nearly all of the Senate) considers itself pro-life, a majority would not vote in favor of the bill. He and other committee members seemed to say the introduction was mostly a courtesy to a fellow senator and an opening to discussion of the broader issue.

But the introduction could be more than that. It is now an official, live bill. If you’re ideologically, clearly “pro-life” — as that is understood in most Idaho Republican circles — then you probably do think very much as Shippy does. And the logical conclusion of that is to consider most intentional abortions, maybe with a few exceptions, as some form of manslaughter or murder, and punishable as such. And that would mean jailing women unfortunate enough to encounter problems associated with their pregnancies — in Idaho.

If Idaho’s pro-life community is as serious about its intent as it proclaims — as serious about it as Shippy genuinely appears to be — then how long will this bill, or something like it, remain in a chairperson’s desk drawer?

And I thought: Give it time.

Stapilus is a former Idaho newspaper reporter and editor who blogs at ridenbaugh.com. He may be contacted at stapilus@ridenbaugh.com.