Gov. Gary Herbert recently signed a bill that requires the Utah Department of Health to prepare and compile a report on abortion statistics.
The mandatory report must include statistics such as the number of abortions performed per year, why the patient wanted the abortion and even the ethnicity of the patient.
As is expected, Republican lawmakers are thrilled with the pernicious, overbearing new law.
“This is a good bill. Ask yourself: do you want to see more abortions or less abortions?” said Rep. LaVar Christensen, R-Draper.
Rep. Steve Eliason, R-Sandy, echoed Christensen’s approval. “This is a matter of life and death — it’s something that is worth measuring and tracking,” he said.
The bill passed both the House and Senate with overwhelming — albeit partisan — majorities, and now conservative lawmakers can go home to their constituents and brag about how valiant they have been in their anti-abortion efforts.
But has pro-life Utah really won?
The funny thing is that this new law accomplishes absolutely nothing novel. Utah already provides these exact abortion statistics to the federal government every year, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) compiles the same report our health department is now required to do.
This fact was unveiled on the House floor in a telling exchange between Rep. Rebecca Edwards, R-North Salt Lake, and the House Bill Sponsor Rep. Keith Grover, R-Provo.
“The information is gathered and sent to the CDC,” Edwards said. “Is there anything that is preventing the state from accessing this information right now?”
Grover responded to this question.
“We do have access to this information. This legislation would make sure we always have access,” Grover said.
So Utah legislators took the time to draft and vote on a bill that only puts more red tape in an information-sharing process that already exists and that we are under no threat of losing.
Our Legislature might as well start drafting a law that requires people to breathe with their lungs.
Never mind the numerous problems our legislators could have spent their time on, such as the $2 billion discrepancy between Utah’s per-pupil education funding and the mean funding rates. Never mind that there actually are issues that do need a law that requires research and statistics, such as gun sales. Our legislators instead wanted to waste their time and discuss made-up problems that already have solutions.
Our Republican legislators are playing politics, plain and simple. They have taken the serious and ethical dispute on abortion and turned it into a mirage of gimmickry and showmanship. To them, abortion isn’t a moral issue or a concern for women’s rights — it’s a political opportunity.
They’ll tell us this new law is a profound achievement and a step in the right direction for the state. They’ll tell us that they’re not just wasting our time to make themselves look good when it comes to their voting record on abortion.
Don’t believe them.