By: Mary Steurer and Michael Achterling(ND Monitor)
A North Dakota legislative committee this week recommended adding $1 million in the budget bill for the Office of Management and Budget for a “life education committee” to teach people about abortion alternatives.
The amendment was brought by Sen. Janne Myrdal, R-Edinburg.
Myrdal said the program would help inform pregnant women considering abortion of other options.
“What we’ve found in the state is that they don’t have information about what those are: pro-life centers, adoption services for women and families in crisis pregnancy,” Myrdal said.
The state’s Abortion Control Act already requires health care professionals to make pregnant women aware of alternatives before they can obtain abortions.
The committee established by the amendment would oversee a campaign to teach the public about state abortion laws, laws and policies “supporting life and family values,” as well as resources available for pregnant mothers, families and children, it states.
While the campaign would be supervised by the committee, it would be carried out by a third party contractor, according to the amendment.
The contractor would be hired through the Office of Management and Budget in consultation with the Office of the Attorney General.
The committee would include three people appointed by Gov. Kelly Armstrong, two people chosen by the House majority leader and two people chosen by the Senate majority leader.
The life education committee would also be tasked with overseeing a video the state must produce to educate abortion providers about state abortion laws, the amendment states.
Lawmakers set aside $50,000 for the video under House Bill 1511, which Armstrong signed into law on Wednesday.
Bridget Turbide, executive director of North Dakota Right to Life, spoke before the Government Operations Division of the Senate Appropriations Committee in favor of the amendment on Wednesday. The amendment originally recommended $1.5 million, which Turbide said is needed to educate the public properly. Lawmakers cut this down to $1 million.
Some committee members asked why Turbide wanted the state to conduct the program as opposed to a private organization.
She said that the messaging would be more effective coming from the state.
“The public are going to agree with the state education over the private a lot of the time,” she said.
Sen. Terry Wanzek, the committee’s chair, asked Turbide to prepare more specific details on how third-party contractors would use the money to share with lawmakers.
The amendment was made after the budget bill had its public hearings in the House and Senate.
Christina Sambor, an attorney and lobbyist for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, questioned why the amendment was rolled into the Office of Management and Budget bill so late in the legislative session.
“Why wasn’t this a separate piece of legislation that requires a public hearing like everything else?” she asked.
Sambor also noted that the North Dakota Supreme Court sent a strong message against lumping policy issues to budget bills when it ruled in 2023 that the state’s previous OMB budget violated the state constitution’s single-subject rule.
Myrdal said the amendment aligns with existing laws that signal the state’s preference for birth over abortion.
“This is just going forward as a state and doing what we can to inform people of the services. It’s not really controversial,” Myrdal said.
When asked if the amendment constituted a policy change during the appropriations process, Myrdal said no.
“Appropriations should not write policy and there are times they go, ‘Shoot, we forgot that little thing,’” she said.
Katie Christensen, state director of external affairs for Planned Parenthood North Dakota Action Fund, said the campaign and proposed committee would be a “disastrous use” of public money.
“North Dakotans are facing real struggles accessing sexual and reproductive health care, and yet politicians obsessed with banning abortion care about one thing: pouring money into their misguided priorities,” she said in a statement to the North Dakota Monitor.
The committee gave the bill a do-pass recommendation. It is headed to the full Senate Appropriations Committee next.
Lawmakers passed a law in 2023 that banned all abortions, except in cases of rape or incest in the first six weeks of pregnancy or when the pregnancy poses a serious health risk to the mother. That law was struck down by a district court judge last fall, who found that women have a right to seek abortions for any reason up to the point of fetal viability.
The state appealed the lower court’s decision to the North Dakota Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on the case.
