Last week, an NH Senate Committee recommended passage of HB1609 [bill text] to add an exception for “fatal fetal anomalies” to the Fetal Life Protection Act (FLPA). The entire Senate will vote Thursday on this bill.
Please call your Senator ASAP and ask them to vote against HB1609!
While a fatal fetal anomaly exception might make sense at first glance, there are several reasons why this is bad for babies:
1) The law does not define a “fatal fetal anomaly”, which invites abuse: does this mean fatal in the next week? Month? Year? 5 years? How certain must the diagnosis be?
2) The determination is left up to the abortion doctor, with no oversight or second opinion. We’ve seen abortion doctors caught stretching the truth on exceptions, for example in Kansas where it was reported that late term abortions were justified for teenagers as mental health exceptions because they wanted to attend a rock concert or prom.
3) Doctors can be wrong: we don’t want babies to have to pay the price. There were several testimonies (SB399, HB1673, and others) from NH mothers who were told their child had a fatal anomaly, and they were encouraged to abort. These children were born and have been thriving for years now.
As a reminder, the FLPA came into effect on January 1 and is already protecting unborn babies at 24 weeks and beyond (widely accepted as the point of viability). This bill is one of several attempts to weaken or eliminate these protections this year.
