Abortion bill assigned to new panel

A controversial abortion bill was brought back in the Senate.

Senate leadership reassigned House Bill 1549 to the Senate Rules Committee.

The measure, dubbed the “Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2017,” would prevent the abortion of a fetus solely on the basis that it had a genetic abnormality. It makes no exceptions for rape or incest.

The measure was originally assigned to the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, chaired by Sen. Ervin Yen, R-Oklahoma City. Yen is a cardiac anesthesiologist.

Yen said he would not hear the bill because it was unconstitutional, adding that lawmakers had more pressing issues to deal with.

The courts have recently tossed out a number of bills that put restrictions on abortion.

Yen said that had Senate leadership asked him to hear the bill, he would have given it a hearing. He said he believed it would have failed dramatically in his committee.

Sen. Nathan Dahm, R-Broken Arrow, asked that the measure be reassigned because Yen would not give it a hearing.

Dahm is the Senate author. Rep. George Faught, R-Muskogee, is the House author.

Senate leadership reassigned the measure to the Senate Rules Committee, chaired by Sen. Eddie Fields, R-Wynona.

The committee met Wednesday. The bill was not on the agenda and was not taken up under other business. It could be taken up at another meeting of the committee.

Fields said he has not decided yet whether or not to give the measure a hearing.

“I am still looking at it,” Fields said.

Faught called the reassignment “encouraging.”

He said the bill is just another effort to protect innocent life.

He was not supportive of amending the bill to allow it in cases of rape and incest.

“It is still a child,” he said. “It is still a life.”

Some diagnoses can be incorrect, Faught said. “Life has value.”