A group of Republicans in the Iowa legislature want to define abortion as murder, with no exceptions.

GOP Representative Rob Bacon and eight other Republicans introduced legislation that would amend 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.”

The term “zygote” refers to a cell that is created when a sperm fertilizes an egg.

“It’s to protect the life of the unborn,” Bacon told the Ames Tribune. “There’s still some of us that believe life begins at conception.”

Under the bill, those charged with murder would include a woman who takes medication to induce an abortion or a doctor who performs the procedure. It also grants no exceptions for rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother.

Pro-choice legislators were taken aback by the proposal.

“We’re talking about the victim of rape would go to prison along with her rapist,” Representative Beth Wessel-Kroeschell (D) 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?’”

Bacon admitted that his bill has little chance of passing the legislature and becoming law.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

To Learn More:

Bill Would Define Abortion As Murder (by Mike Malloy, Ames Tribune)

Iowa Bill Would Jail Raped Women For ‘Murder’ Of Single-Cell Zygotes (by David Edwards, Raw Story)