Another bill may join abortion debate

Another bill may be added to the 2004 legislative debate over abortion.

Rep. Morgan Philpot, R-Sandy, has introduced HB141, Abortion Law Amendments, which would restrict funding to organizations that "advocate the use of elective" abortions.

The bill has no text, as is often the case with bills filed just before the deadline, which was last week.

Philpot said legislative attorneys haven't settled on the exact language, but basically he wants a bill that would, by definition, separate "elective" abortions from medically needed abortions — such as an abortion needed to save the life of the mother or avoid injury to the mother, should the fetus go to term.

With a definition in place, he then wants to restrict funds to organizations that support elective abortions.

He declined to name such organizations. But he said that perhaps groups like Planned Parenthood of Utah would qualify.

Karrie Galloway, CEO of Planned Parenthood, said during a debate last week over another abortion bill that some legislators have apparently been working to find ways of restricting public funding for her organization.

Planned Parenthood does not provide abortions.

But it does offer family planning counseling. And it holds some state contracts to provide abstinence-based education for Utah teenagers — the only kind of birth control the state will support financially.

"We were mentioned by name" by supporters of an anti-abortion bill several years ago, Galloway told a House committee last week in a hearing on a separate bill aimed at blocking state funding for abortions.

Utah Democrat Party leaders and some Democratic legislators have criticized the GOP majority in the Legislature this session for running "right-wing" bills that will entangle Utah in expensive lawsuits.

Among the bills targeted by Democrats are two abortion bills — one that would ban partial-birth abortions and the other bill that would block state funding used directly or indirectly for abortions. Both bills have passed the Senate and are being considered by the House.

Attorney General Mark Shurtleff and his staff have attempted to place a cost on such bills. The AG has spent more than $1 million defending a law passed several years ago that aimed at stopping payroll deductions from public employees' paychecks that go to the political activity funds of such groups as the Utah Education Association and the Utah Public Employees Association.