Lying for Life

Michigan lawmakers are considering legislation that would let parents claim a tax deduction for fetuses, extending them the same benefits as children.

House bills 5684 and 5685 would amend the state's tax code to include fetuses that have completed at least 12 weeks gestation as of the last day of the tax year as "dependents." Doing so would allow the fetus' tax-paying parents-to-be to save an estimated $160 on their taxes. Critics of the bill, which had its first hearing in the House Tax Policy Committee on November 20, say that such a law is just another way to make it harder for women in Michigan to get abortions.

"It is a backdoor attempt to get personhood for a fetus," said Shelli Weisberg, legislative director for the ACLU of Michigan. "These are just ways to begin to build the record, so one day they can say there's enough in our legislative history to say that the intent is to say that a fetus is a person."

Dan Jarvis, research and policy director for Michigan Family Forum, a conservative, Christian public policy organization, said the bill was an idea that his group had discussed with "a number of lawmakers" since 2008. "It does cost money when you're pregnant," said Jarvis. "We thought it was a good thing for young families in particular to get that added tax credit a few months earlier."

Jarvis says that endowing "personhood" to the unborn was not the intent of the measure—the goal was to encourage women to seek prenatal care, and to decrease the tax burden on young families. "To be perfectly honest we were totally caught off guard by that," said Jarvis. "We had never talked about that with the sponsors. When it came up in committee we were all floored."