ND bill targets ‘sexual reproductive imposition’

BISMARCK — Docs would face a felony cost for implanting reproductive materials into unconsenting sufferers underneath a invoice the North Dakota Home of Representatives handed Thursday, Feb. 2.

Home Invoice 1140, introduced by Rep. Bernie Satrom, R-Jamestown, handed unanimously. It criminalizes “sexual reproductive imposition.”

Satrom instructed the Home Human Providers Committee earlier that his inspiration for the invoice got here after watching a movie on Netflix.

“Our Father” is the story of an Indiana fertility physician who used his personal sperm to impregnate unknowing sufferers, fathering possible dozens of kids within the Seventies and ’80s.

He in the end was given a one-year suspended sentence in 2017 and paid a $500 positive after pleading responsible to 2 counts of obstruction of justice. Indiana had no legislation particularly forbidding the physician’s conduct.

Neither does North Dakota, in keeping with Satrom.

“This specific invoice would enable us to discourage that type of habits. If someone determined to do one thing, it might present some very critical penalties,” he instructed the Home panel final month.

Rep. Kathy Frelich, R-Devils Lake, known as the invoice “proactive.”

“We are able to sit again and depend on the idea of ‘North Dakota good,’ or we are able to act at the moment,” she instructed the Home.

The Home handed the invoice with no dialogue. The invoice now goes to the Senate.