Alia Beard Rau

The Republic | azcentral.com

The Arizona Legislature will consider a bill to ban the use of an aborted fetus or embryo for research, except in limited circumstances.

Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, introduced Senate Bill 1474 Monday afternoon. The bill would only allow an aborted fetus or embryos to be used in research if it was for the purpose of determining the health of the embryo or mother or for a pathological study. It also would make it illegal to experiment on an embryo or fetus intended to be aborted or to perform an abortion in order to use the embryo or fetus for research.

This bill would prevent not only the sale of fetuses or embryos, but would also make it illegal to give them away or to accept them, or to help in the sale, donation, acceptance or use of them. Buying or selling a fetus or embryo is already against federal law, but donation is not.

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Jodi Liggett, Planned Parenthood of Arizona vice president of public affairs, said the Arizona Planned Parenthood clinics do not participate in fetal tissue donation of any kind and do not do their own research on embryos or fetuses. But Liggett said the legislation would likely be of significant concern to Arizona's medical community.

"There is a lot of very important research conducted on fetal tissue that folks donate for any number of reasons and in many different circumstances," she said. "I think it's dangerous for medical science for people to be cutting off such a big avenue for research and discovery."

The conservative advocacy group the Center for Arizona Policy wrote the bill. The group's president, Cathi Herrod, said the bill is a revised version of one the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit struck down as too vague several years ago.

"It simply ensures that aborted babies are not harvested or sold in Arizona," she said. "We are not making any statement about whether it is happening or not. We are just ensuring it doesn't happen."

Herrod said the legislation applies only to an aborted fetus or embryo, and would not apply to a couple that chooses to donate frozen embryos for research.

The legislation comes on the heels of videos released last summer by an anti-abortion group that alleged to show a Planned Parenthood executive discussing procedures for providing fetal body parts to researchers.

The group behind the undercover video, the Center for Medical Progress, claimed Planned Parenthood violated federal laws by selling fetal tissue of aborted fetuses to medical researchers. Planned Parenthood has said that’s false and criticized the group behind the video, saying the “outrageous claims are flat-out untrue.”

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A Texas grand jury in January chose not to indict the Planned Parenthood officials in the video, but instead indicted the two individuals who recorded the video — one for attempting to purchase the fetal tissue.

Following the release of the video, Gov. Doug Ducey ordered state health officials to put into effect “emergency rules” to ban the illegal sale of tissue from aborted fetuses. The president of Planned Parenthood of Arizona has said such procedures do not occur in Arizona.