IOWA GOP MEN: Bill Would Define Abortion as Murder
State Rep. Rob Bacon believes abortion is murder and he wants the Iowa Code to reflect that.
Bacon, R-Slater, and eight other Republicans introduced such a bill in the Iowa House Wednesday. It would alter the definition of a person in murder cases to “an individual human being, without regard to age of development, from the moment of conception, when a zygote is formed, until natural death.”
“It’s to protect the life of the unborn,” Bacon told the Tribune. “There’s still some of us that believe life begins at conception.”
Those charged with murder, under the bill, would include a mother who takes abortion-inducing drugs or a doctor who performs an abortion. It also grants no exceptions for rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother.
Rep. Beth Wessel-Kroeschell, D-Ames, was dismayed by the bill.
“We’re talking about the victim of rape would go to prison along with her rapist,” Wessel-Kroeschell said. “It’s very hard to understand the feeling behind it. It’s a health care issue, I mean, sometimes in order to save someone’s life a woman could possibly need an abortion. When we talk about being pro-life, my new question is ‘whose life?’”