Pregnant people could claim fetuses as dependents with controversial bill

• By Arianna Hunt, TheStatehouseFile.com
• Jan 25, 2024

The Senate Tax and Fiscal Policy Committee met to discuss three bills Tuesday, including Senate Bill 98, which would allow a pregnant person to claim their fetus as a dependent for tax purposes, provided they supply a radiological image proving the pregnancy with their tax returns.

As the Indiana code stands, a “fetus” means “an unborn child, irrespective of gestational age or the duration of the pregnancy.”

The Senate Tax and Fiscal Policy Committee met to discuss SB 98 on Tuesday.

Photo by Arianna Hunt, TheStatehouseFile.com.

Bill author Sen. Andy Zay, R-Pierceton, said the bill would hold many benefits for mothers, such as supporting them in visiting a doctor.

“By having this incentive up front for a mother to get to a doctor to get access to this credit, you’re building that relationship to hopefully get prenatal care,” he said.

In the case of miscarriage, Zay said the pregnancy could still be considered for the tax exemption, supporting people in a traumatic time.

Committee Chair Sen. Travis Holdman, R-Markle, prefaced the meeting by saying the bill won’t be passed this year, but that didn’t stop plenty of testifiers from showing.

Haley Bougher, state director of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, opposed the bill and believes the nature of it would increase the surveillance of pregnant people.

“This bill takes the state of Indiana another step towards criminalizing any behavior that is deemed harmful towards the pregnancy,” she said, “placing the rights of the fetus above the rights of the pregnant person.”

Dr. Lacey Davidson, assistant professor at the University of Indianapolis, also believes the bill would allow the government to overstep into the personal lives of Hoosiers.

“The implementation of this bill requires users to submit their personal medical records with their taxes,” she said. “This gross invasion of privacy to access the reported benefits of this bill cannot be written into law. Further, if someone has a devastating loss of a pregnancy as expressed by other testifiers, this will give the state the opportunities to investigate families for potential tax fraud.”

She also voiced concerns about the concept of fetal personhood.

“The establishment of fetal personhood also encourages surveillance of the activities of pregnant people, which is an invasion of privacy during a time that is already extremely difficult for many families,” she said.

Finally, Davidson believes many underlying problems are contributing to Indiana’s poor maternal health outcomes and that there are other ways to support people to expand their families.

In rebuttal to another similar concern about privacy from Dr. Elizabeth Ziff, a sociologist and assistant professor at the University of Indianapolis, Sen. Ryan Mishler, R-Bremen, said the tax credit is optional, so if someone did not want to claim the tax credit, they wouldn’t have to.

“If you take government money, you’re going to have government intrusion,” he said.

To that, Ziff responded that the state should be “focused on measures that are going to benefit all families instead of it being an optional thing.”

Jodi Smith from Indiana Right to Life testified in favor of the bill and even suggested amendments to prevent fraud, believing that “pregnancy should be validated through legal documents such as Social Security numbers or fetal death certificates.”

FOOTNOTE:  Arianna Hunt is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.