WATCH: Committee advances bill that would make abortion crime
BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) - Lawmakers in Louisiana on Wednesday, May 4 voted in support of a bill that would criminalize abortion.
HB813 proposes, among other things, to change current laws so that the word “person” includes a human being from the moment of fertilization and that the term, "unborn child" becomes defined as an individual human being from fertilization until birth.
THE MEETING AT THE CAPITOL
The House Committee on Administration of Criminal Justice convened Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. to address multiple bills.
HB813 was fourth on the agenda, and lawmakers began to address it shortly after 1 p.m.
THE TESTIMONIES
One community representative who spoke up during the meeting read a letter that was from a woman who'd adopted a child.
Part of the letter said, "The gift you gave us will be cherished above anything else in our lives."
The letter's writer then went on to vow that she would raise the child to have reverence for God.
After reading the letter to the committee, the community representative tearfully declared that she was the birthmother of the child that was adopted by the woman who wrote the letter.
She then asked lawmakers to make a decision based on their value of life, and emphasized that adoption should be an option for pregnant women, as opposed to abortion.
An attorney named Susan Raborn also spoke during the meeting and said she regularly encourages women not to get abortions.
During her testimony, she mentioned that she feels certain individuals encourage abortion in order to kill "minority babies."
Raborn also explained that in her youth she'd had many successes in life, and that in hopes of continuing to achieve success, she chose to have an abortion.
Raborn concluded by saying, "At the end of the day when you're 61 years old, you're still living with the fact that you killed your babies." She then urged lawmakers to end abortion.
Another community representative who followed Raborn's testimony relayed her long and painful ordeal to attempt to conceive via IVF.
She used it as an example to illustrate that the painful process was her choice and that lawmakers would not have had the right to demand that she participate in such medical procedures related to reproduction.
She also mentioned that HB813 would possibly criminalize certain aspects of IVF.
In concluding her remarks, she urged lawmakers to dismiss HB813 and to, instead, focus on enacting laws related to the comprehensive education to prevent unplanned pregnancy.
The bill passed, 7-2, around 2 p.m.
Watch a live stream of the committee meeting in the video player above.