Blackfoot legislator wants to replace the term ‘fetus’ with ‘preborn children’ in Idaho law

BOISE (Idaho Capital Sun) — Idaho’s strict abortion ban has been law for over a year. And if the Legislature’s first bill introduced in a committee in 2024 passes, Idaho law would acknowledge “preborn children.”

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Julianne Young, R-Blackfoot, framed the change as a simple bill that wouldn’t change policy. But Planned Parenthood criticized the bill as part of a move toward “legal ambiguity” that could affect access to reproductive health care.

The Idaho House State Affairs Committee, which met Tuesday for the first time this legislative session, unanimously introduced the bill without discussion. The vote tees the bill — House Bill 381 — up for a full committee hearing on the bill.

The committee must hold a public hearing and pass the bill before the Idaho House would then consider it. A full committee hearing for the bill has not yet been scheduled.

Young, a Blackfoot Republican lawmaker, said the bill replaces references for the term “fetus” in Idaho law with the term “preborn child.” The bill makes that change in Idaho law more than 70 times, according to Idaho Reports. 

“It doesn’t change legal definitions. So it’s not a substantive change in policy. But it does replace a medicalized term with a term that we all understand to be a person, which is the position of the state of Idaho when it comes to our preborn children,” Young told the committee.

Planned Parenthood argues change could affect reproductive health care

Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, in a news release, said the bill could affect reproductive health care, including birth control and emergency contraception. 

The bill “could create a pathway for further restricting reproductive rights of Idahoans including in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, some forms of birth control, and emergency contraception,” the news release said.

“Despite the blatant pain and suffering caused by the abortion ban on the books today, the fact that this is where lawmakers are choosing to put their energy is beyond disappointing. Lawmakers even hearing this bill should tell Idahoans that their calls to make things better have fallen on uncaring ears,” Planned Parenthood director for Idaho Mistie DelliCarpini-Tolman said in the news release. “For the health and safety of all people in our state, we cannot afford to waste time changing medical language to politically and emotionally charged terminology.”

Young told the Idaho Capital Sun, in an email Tuesday, that her goal with the bill is to “ensure that statutory language communicates accurately and reflects the existing policy of the state of Idaho.”

She said the bill does not seek to grant fetuses the same rights as children or people under Idaho law. In some other states, women have been prosecuted under the so-called fetal personhood legal concept after losing their pregnancies or for using drugs during their pregnancies, the Marshall Project reported earlier this year.  

“It doesn’t change existing law. It more accurately communicates existing policy,” Young told the Sun.

The 25-page bill would amend more than a dozen existing Idaho laws that either reference fetuses or stillborn children — from murder laws and abortion bans, to a law regulating agreements for surrogate mothers and a law defining aggravated battery in Idaho. 

In deciding Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that fetuses are not considered people, legally. But since the court reversed that opinion last year — without weighing on the fetal personhood concept — some have viewed fetal personhood as a key fight over reproductive rights, TIME reported last year. 

Rep. Colin Nash, a Boise Democrat, said at the hearing that he’d like to know whether the bill expresses values, tries to make Idaho law more consistent, or if the bill would convey any other legal rights.

States Newsroom national reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris contributed to this story.