Planned Parenthood’s lobbyist, Jamie Burch Elliott, was not happy Monday during debate on Senate File 523. The bill relates to the nonconsensual cause of death of and serious injury to an unborn person.
The use of the word person in relation to an unborn baby did not sit well with Planned Parenthood.
“What I see here is that this is putting personhood language into the criminal code,” Elliott said. “This brings abortion into this bill when you insert personhood language here. It lays the groundwork to ban abortion altogether because a fertilized egg has the same legal rights and protections as a person under this law. It’s a troubling attempt to insert this extreme and unpopular language into Iowa law that sends Iowa down a dangerous path when you define a fertilized egg as a person.”
Elliott expressed concern that the law treats a fertilized egg like a person and called it extreme and dangerous.
“What this law does is treats a fertilized egg as a person in Iowa code,” she said. “That’s obviously extreme, that’s dangerous and makes this bill suddenly about abortion, whether that’s the intent or not. This bill doesn’t protect Iowa women. It doesn’t protect families. It doesn’t protect anyone’s health or their pregnancy, it just inserts a one-sided and extreme ideology into Iowa code.”
