Dignity of Life Bills Included in 2019 Legislative Session

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The Utah Legislature each year provides opportunities to advance the common good and for Catholics to promote our Church’s teaching in the public square.

The 2019 session offers a wide variety of bills upon which we can share our faith-based values with our legislators. While more bills will inevitably come forward as the session continues, our priorities right now include supporting or opposing the following:

Protecting the dignity and sanctity of life against legislative attempts to undermine the voter-approved Medicaid expansion.  After five years of local legislators fighting against any expansion, voters sent a very clear message that health care access is a priority - so much of a priority, we even added to the state sales tax to pay for our brothers’ and sisters’ health care. Despite the funding mechanism, and data showing it will pay for expansion and then some, a few legislators now are proposing unnecessary limits that could leave 50,000 Utahns still struggling without health insurance coverage.

SB 96 Medicaid Expansion Adjustments would leave the state where it is now, with 50,000 people unable to access health care, another few tens of thousands waiting for a federal waiver the state has been trying to get for more than a year now, without success, and with the just-passed sales tax going to pay 30 percent of Medicaid costs instead of the 10 percent the expansion would require. SB 97 Medicaid Program Revisions would repeal the expansion outright. The Diocese of Salt Lake City opposes both of these bills.

The attacks on the voter-approved Medicaid expansion make another priority bill for opposition, HB 121 End of Life Prescription Provisions, legalizing assisted suicide, even more dangerous. For the tens of thousands who would be forced to go without health care if the expansion repeals are passed, the only affordable option for their terminal illness may be a lethal prescription. The diocese opposes this bill.

Despite the claims of proponents, few seek assisted suicide because of pain. Instead, like many suicidal individuals, they seek the means to kill themselves over fear of what continuing to live might entail. The proper response for any person who fears their future so much they are willing to end their life to avoid it, whether due to a terminal diagnosis or depression, is compassionate care from loved ones and competent mental health treatment from professionals. Of course, getting such care requires health insurance, something that will be denied under SB 96 and SB 97.

Meanwhile, legislators will consider numerous bills aimed at ensuring mental health care and safe storage of firearms to help reduce Utah’s astronomical suicide rate. Several bills address mental health care in general and at least two will address firearm safety, the most common and fatal means of attempting suicide in the state.  HB 17 Firearm Violence and Suicide Prevention Amendments will ask the state and gun dealers to help educate the gun-buying public on safe storage and suicide prevention.  HB 87 Safe Storage of Firearms Amendments goes further, making it a criminal offense to store a firearm in a place it is reasonable to believe a minor or restricted person will have easy access. The diocese does not yet have a position on this bill.

On a completely different note, the diocese will be advocating on bills that address homelessness and the human right to safe shelter. We will be supporting SB 34 Affordable Housing Modifications, which seeks to address our current housing crisis. We also will be watching several bills that promise to address accountability within our homeless services system.

On the homelessness prevention side, we will be supporting HB 103 Utah Intergenerational Poverty Work and Self-Sufficiency Tax Credit, which provides a refundable tax credit to help people who have lived in poverty for decades move up the ladder and out of poverty, rather than deeper into poverty.

Finally, we will be supporting HJR 8 Proposal to Amend Utah Constitution – Slavery and Involuntary Servitude Prohibition which, as the name implies, would eliminate a current exception in the Utah Constitution that allows slavery and involuntary servitude in the correctional system.

The diocese is watching and advocating on many other bills as well, including a proposal to restrict abortions after 15 weeks and another for certain diagnoses. The complete list of bills and diocesan positions is available on the Office of Life, Justice and Peace webpage on the diocesan website https://www.dioslc.org/outreach/office-of-life-justice-and-peace.  The list is updated weekly throughout the session.  

Jean Hill is director of the Diocese of Salt Lake City Office of Life, Justice and Peace.