‘Preborn child’? Embryo? Fetus? In Idaho law, what’s the difference? A lot | Opinion

It took a self-described pro-life OB-GYN and in vitro fertilization specialist to put the brakes on a bill that would change the wording in dozens of places in Idaho law from “fetus” to “preborn child.”

House Bill 400 even seeks to eliminate the definition of “embryo” entirely and labels anything from fertilization to birth as a “preborn child.”

The medical definition of an embryo is an organism from fertilization to the beginning of the third month of pregnancy, while a fetus is after that until birth.

The House State Affairs Committee on Monday heard from 18 people — 15 of whom opposed the bill, from a wide range of perspectives, including the faith community, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, National Organization for Women and the medical community.

“What concerns me most is that the term being suggested as a replacement for the medically accurate term ‘fetus’ is a term based solely on religious doctrine and theological claims about when life begins,” said the Rev. Sara LaWall, minister of the Boise Universalist Unitarian Church. “And this theology and doctrine prescribing life and personhood before birth is not shared by my faith, by the community members in my church, and by many other interfaith communities in our state, and it concerns me that this body might very well allow religious beliefs not shared by the entire community to become legal statute.”

That, alone, is good enough reason to kill this bill.

But it was finally Cristin Slater, the medical director of the Idaho Center for Reproductive Medicine, who gave the committee pause.

“The current bill tries to lump everything from fertilization to baby,” Slater said. “And I get it. I respect life. Life is beautiful. I want life. But that’s not accurate terminology, especially in the OB-GYN world and fertility specialist world.”

Slater, who is board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology and in the sub-specialty of reproductive endocrinology and infertility, explained — complete with diagrams — those embryonic cells do not constitute a “preborn child.”

“I don’t look at this two-cell embryo as a baby,” Slater said, pointing to her diagram. “This is something I hope is a baby, but it’s not.”

Slater said she worries that the law will have an impact on access to care and that she’s already seen doctors fleeing the state because of past legislation.

“If legislation is going to make law, I want law to be accurate and follow medical terminology,” she said.

Why that’s important, particularly for someone like Slater, is because in vitro fertilization works with a lot of embryos, many of which do not become viable. Disposing of or seeking to implant embryos that later die could set up a doctor or a parent for criminal charges under Idaho’s strict abortion ban.

Rep. Julianne Young, R-Blackfoot, who brought the legislation, made the bizarre argument that current state law is already flawed grammatically, so changing the language to “preborn child” shouldn’t have any impact.

It seems to us that rather than exacerbating the problem in state law by introducing even more imprecise language, it would make more sense to simply go back through Idaho Code and fix the places where the language is inexact. After all, Young spent hours and hours on the legislation, which clocks in at 25 pages, finding all of the references to “fetus” in state law.

But we suspect something else is going on here.

The real effect of this law seems likely to be that it sets the stage, in terms of propaganda value, for later efforts to impose more restrictions on abortion and contraception.

In legal terms, “preborn child” will be a term of art within the scope of Idaho Code. You could just as easily change all the instances of “fetus” to some other made-up term, and the effect would be the same.

Young, who called herself “a word girl. I’m an English nerd,” surely understands that.

It would be like calling Young a “pre-voted-out-of-office legislator.”

We suspect that the real reason Young and her allies want this change is so that when they take a swing at the morning-after pill, they can say: “This medication ends the life of a preborn child.” They might make the same argument with IUDs because there’s a lot of misunderstanding about how they work.

Young and her allies don’t want to hear from people like Slater, who know that there is indeed a difference between an embryo, a fetus and a baby.

If there is any silver lining here, it is that after Slater gave her testimony, the committee took a break and then voted to hold the bill in committee.

Let’s hope this bill never sees the light of day.

Or, should we say, stays a pre-passed law.

Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members Mary Rohlfing and Patricia Nilsson.