Issues with language stalled a bill from surviving through the state legislature’s second funnel week.

The Senate Fetal Homicide bill failed to advance out of House committee, effectively tabling it for the rest of the 2019 session and making it ineligible for further debate. The bill, using the term “unborn person” as part of a measure increasing penalties for ending a woman’s pregnancy without her consent, sparked backlash from opponents afraid that it could lead to further criminalization of abortion and possibly lead to criminal investigations of women who suffer miscarriages.

In reference to the bill, District 20 Representative Ray Sorensen (R) says terminology is everything, “Honestly both sets of wording made sense to me and the bill makes sense. So I’m not going to sit here and say one set of terminology is better than another but I would assume that something like that bill is not going to be dead. It could even see life yet, getting attached to a budget or a tax bill somehow and making an issue of said budget and said tax bill. But if it doesn’t, then I would fully expect to see it again next year.”

You can hear more on which bills passed through the recent funnel week during today’s Let’s Talk Guthrie County program with Sorensen on air and at raccoonvalleyradio.com.