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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSenate Republicans Shoehorn Anti-Abortion Measure Into Tax Bill
The tax break for fetuses, also in the House bill, is part of a broader effort to establish personhood rights and destroy Roe v. Wade.Republicans are making tax reform about abortion rights.
A widely criticized provision that would give fetuses access to college savings plans made it into the draft tax bill Senate Republicans released last week.
The measure is similar to one included in the Houses tax plan. The provision would enable an embryo or a fetus ― defined by the proposed legislation as an unborn child ― to be named as a beneficiary to a 529 college savings account, a tax-advantaged way parents can invest money to save for education costs.
Its already relatively easy, under current tax law, to open a 529 before a child is born. The real intention here is to sneak anti-abortion language into federal law, according to feminists and abortion rights advocates.
The tax bills language is part of a broader strategy employed by the White House and Congressional Republicans to chip away at Roe v. Wade, says Sarah Lipton-Lubet, vice president for reproductive health and rights at the National Partnership for Women and Families. For years, anti-abortion activists have tried (and mostly failed) to get personhood laws passed that would give embryos and fetuses rights ― ultimately making it a crime to abort them.
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The Senates bill goes out of its way to define a unborn child, according to a passage from the bill sent to HuffPost by a representative of the Senate Finance Committee: The provision provides that an unborn child may be treated as a designated beneficiary or an individual under section 529 plans. An unborn child means a child in utero. A child in utero means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.
More: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/republicans-anti-abortion-tax-bill-529-plans_us_5a0b1674e4b0bc648a0e18cb?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
The fuckers only care about the fetus. They do not give one shit about the child. They are trying to take away every safety net that is offered to children including health care.
CrispyQ
(36,509 posts)I've reached the point where I could give a shit if I'm rude to self-identified republicans. Fuck all of them.
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)Freethinker65
(10,048 posts)If you were conceived while in the U.S. you have citizenship then? In vitro multiple implantations each can get their own 529 set up? What about frozen fertilized embryos? (...think of all that tax free compound interest!, oh wait, they specified in utero so they actually discussed this possibility...hahaha)
I was fortunate enough that my parents had enough disposable income in their later years to set up a small 529 for my son. It is not something my husband and I could/or would have even considered setting up prior to my sons birth (not enough income and too many previous miscarriages). This makes little sense to me unless as OP infers this is only a back door attempt at personhood for blastocysts.
The GOP either is setting up the bill for failure, or hopes to use idiotic symbolic parts to reach a compromise (we will offer to remove these stupid things in hopes of garnering final votes for passage).
Insane.