Idaho state lawmakers are moving to end the trafficking of aborted babies’ body parts in their state.
On Tuesday, the state Senate passed a bill in a strong 27-7 vote that would ban the harvesting of aborted babies’ body parts for research, according to MagicValley.com.
Idaho state Sen. Cliff Bayer, R-Boise, who sponsored the bill, said the legislation will send a powerful message to the culture and scientific community about ethical standards.
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“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,” Bayer said. “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.”
Idaho Chooses Life described the bill, the Idaho Unborn Infants Dignity Act, as an historic piece of legislation.
Legislators introduced Idaho Senate Bill 1404 in reaction to the undercover videos by the Center for Medical Progress showing top Planned Parenthood officials selling aborted babies’ body parts. The Idaho bill would ban the donation of organs and tissue from babies destroyed by elective abortions and make it a crime to conduct experiments using their body parts. It would allow miscarried and stillborn babies’ bodies to be donated or disposed of at the parents’ choosing. The bill also would apply to embryonic stem cells.
In addition, the legislation would recognize the lives of unborn babies by providing death certificates for babies who are miscarried.
Both the ACLU and Planned Parenthood testified against the legislation at a hearing last week, according to Idaho Chooses Life. A representative of Planned Parenthood told the committee that the Idaho affiliate does not harvest aborted babies’ body parts, but argued that the bill would interfere with the doctor patient relationship.
“One can only conclude that either they are deceiving people about their current practices, or want the right to sell baby organs and tissue in the future,” the pro-life group said in a press release.
The bill moves to the state House for consideration.
Idaho joins a handful of states that are working to stop the trafficking of aborted babies’ body parts. In February, the Arizona state Senate approved a similar bill that would ban the sale and use of aborted babies’ body parts in research. Pro-life leaders in several other states, including Indiana, Wisconsin and Colorado, also have introduced bills to ban the sale and/or donation of aborted babies’ body parts for research.
The federal law that technically prohibits the sale of aborted babies and their body parts was written by a pro-abortion Congressman decades ago and essentially spells out a process by which sellers of aborted baby body parts can meet certain criteria that allows the sales to be legal. That’s why a Colorado congressman has introduced federal legislation to totally ban the sales of aborted baby body parts.
As LifeNews previously reported, the Planned Parenthood videos have sparked outrage across the country from grassroots activists and stay-at-home-moms to lawmakers and even presidential candidates. In the first undercover video, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical research for Planned Parenthood, admits that Planned Parenthood charges per-specimen for baby body parts, uses altered abortion procedures in order to get intact body parts, and is aware of their own liability for doing so and takes steps to cover it up.
ACTION: Idaho Chooses Life is urging people to contact their state legislators here and urge them to support Senate Bill 1404.
