Ohio Could Give Tax Credits for Unborn Children

An Ohio lawmaker has introduced a new bill that would allow parents to claim unborn children as dependents on their state income taxes.

State Representative Gary Click (R-Vickery) is behind the proposal, which would allow Ohioans to include embryos or fetuses as dependants if conceived during the taxable year.

"I've introduced a bill, look for the acronym here, it's called Strategic Tax Opportunities for Raising Kids: STORK," Click said in a video posted to his X, formerly Twitter, page.

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"You can claim your child as a deduction on your state taxes the year that they were conceived and not the year that they were born... And that is going to help young families get a head start."

"Any parent can tell you that the costs of child-rearing begin piling up well before a baby is born. We should absolutely be in the practice of supporting young families. Passing this bill will be an easy step in that direction," Click said in a statement.

Newsweek reached out to an Ohio Democrats spokesperson via email, on Wednesday outside of working hours for comment on the proposal, which has not yet been assigned to a committee. News of the proposal has been met with mixed reactions.

In a statement to Newsweek on Wednesday via email, Click stated:

"While it is late in the year to expect passage during the general assembly, it is a great time to have the conversation. I anticipate that I will need to reintroduce the STORK Act in the 136th General Assembly with a few modifications and improvements based on feedback.

I find it interesting that some people seem to love the concept and yet remain apprehensive because of their predisposed positions on abortion. However, I believe this bill benefits everyone. Prochoice people often choose life. You can be pro-choice and choose to have children. Many people do and they deserve this benefit just as much as pro-life people do.

It doesn't have to be decisive to support young families. This should be bipartisan. Yet, there seems to be a fear by some that this small tax relief for young families getting started will undermine their entire agenda. Those folks should relax."

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The bill is among other legislation that recognizes fetal personhood, which has sparked heated debates across the U.S.

In 2021, a federal fetal personhood law, The Life at Conception Act, was introduced in Congress, granting embryos and fetuses a constitutional "right to life" beginning at the moment of conception.

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Anti-abortion organizations have lauded this as a step toward greater legal recognition of unborn children.

"This common-sense legislation is a win for Ohio parents and families. The tax code should reflect that expectant mothers are already mothers," Bradley Kehr, government affairs director at advocacy group Americans United for Life told Newsweek on Wednesday.

Critics argue that Click's proposal is a thinly veiled attempt to erode abortion rights by incrementally granting personhood to fetuses.

Pregnancy Justice, a pregnancy-rights advocacy group, states on its website that "the theory of a fetus as a legal person has become the framework of anti-abortion states and was highlighted in U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion in Dobbs, creating a path for a fetal right to life argument under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments... Fetal personhood changes the legal rights and status of pregnant people and forces them to forfeit their own personhood."

In a statement to Newsweek via email on Wednesday, Pregnancy Justice Senior Vice President Dana Sussman said: "This bill typifies the insidious creep of fetal personhood disguised as seemingly well-meaning legislation. Make no mistake, further cementing 'fetal rights' in any form would greatly diminish the rights of pregnant people and leave the door open to injustice.

"The promise of tax credits today at the expense of bodily autonomy forever is a losing proposition. Enacting support like expanded paid family leave, affordable child care and workplace protections would mean real change for pregnant and parenting Ohioans."

Prof. Mary Ziegler, Martin Luther King Professor of Law at UC Davis and the author of Roe: The History of a National Obsession, spoke to Newsweek via phone call on Wednesday regarding her thoughts on Click's bill.

"In theory, I don't think a lot of people have objections to recognizing fetuses as persons in contexts that don't lead to criminalizing the conduct of doctors or pregnant patients.

"So in other contexts or even if this were Europe I don't think it would be particularly concerning because I think in other countries people have found ways to say that the law values fetal life that are not inexorably leading to criminalization.

"But I think in the United States, a lot of what you see when you see laws recognizing fetal rights in non-criminal contexts or non-abortion contexts are part of the concerted strategy to establish that fetuses have constitutional rights and that, for example, liberal laws on abortion or in vitro fertilization are unconstitutional and that strategy has been explicitly laid out.

"There's a document called The New North Star Letter that was signed by the leaders of a variety of important anti-abortion groups in the US that make this clear. I think that changes the calculus, you're not just talking about in isolation you think it's good for people who are pregnant to potentially claim these types of benefits, you're also talking about whether this could lead to other outcomes that are maybe not ones that you would support.

So I think that's the complexity of the issue in the United States."

Noting that Georgia and Utah have similar policies, Prof. Zeigler continued:

"I think the challenge is there's a history of this in the United States. The most obvious example is that a lot of states, including progressive states, have passed laws saying that if a pregnant woman is murdered, that is two homicides not one.

"Those laws have been popular because, again, people can say 'I don't think it's a good idea to criminalize abortion or IVF, but I can see that in some contexts it's good for the law to recognize that fetal life has value' and there are settings where it doesn't seem that you are opposing that there's any necessary tension between recognizing rights for fetuses and unborn children in some contexts and at least supporting abortion not being a felony.

"What's challenging is that there is a social movement that wants these laws to be a step towards that outcome even if they may agree with some Americans on fetal life having value. It's kind of a catch-22, in the sense that there are Americans who may agree with the idea that you can claim unborn children as dependants on your taxes, but they wouldn't agree with the broader strategy that this lawmaker and other lawmakers may have in promoting those laws."

Addressing those who feel there may be a hidden agenda with the proposed bill, Click told Newsweek: "While I may disagree with the recent amendment to Ohio's Constitution, it is done. They were successful. A first-year law student knows that the Constitution is supreme. It's time to lay aside the conspiracy theories and give our young and upcoming families a little room to breathe and grow.

It's one thing to be a sore loser. It's even worse to be a sore winner."

Update 08/28/24 4:39 p.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Gary Click.