HB 2154 would ban legal abortion in Washington by making it a felony crime—with no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. The measure includes an exception for when a medical practitioner is attempting to save the life of a pregnant patient and that attempt results in the unintended death of the human embryo or fetus.

The bill would repeal any statute that regulates abortion.

The bill would declare any federal law that denies or prohibits protection of a “human person’s inalienable right to life” to be unenforceable in the state.

Fetal Homicide

The bill would remove the exception for abortion from the definition of homicide in the state’s penal code. The bill would redefine homicide to include “the killing of a natural person by abortion, which is the act of using or prescribing an instrument, drug, medicine, or any other substance, device, or means to intentionally cause the death of an unborn child.”

If passed, all parties involved in an abortion (physicians, nurses, the pregnant person, etc.) could face murder charges.

Personhood

The bill redefines “person” to include “an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization upon the fusion of a human spermatozoon with a human ovum, or in the case of asexual reproduction, at the equivalent stage of development, until birth.”

Abortion Prohibition Enforcement

The bill would direct the attorney general to direct state agencies to enforce the law regardless of any contrary or conflicting federal statutes, regulations, executive orders, or court decisions.

Latest Action

3/21/19 – Introduced.

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