Kristin Murphy, Deseret News
SALT LAKE CITY Should elementary students participate in school suicide prevention programs?
That question spurred a debate Wednesday as a Utah House committee discussed a bill that would expand suicide prevention resources to younger children amid the mental health crisis.
More Utah youth ages 10 to 24 die from suicide than any other cause, bill sponsor Rep. Brian King, D-Salt Lake City, told members of the House Health and Human Services Committee.
“It’s remarkable to contemplate that a little under 20% of Utah high schoolers have made a plan to commit suicide,” he said. “And we’re concerned about our rate of Utah youth suicides.”
SALT LAKE CITY Should elementary children participate in school suicide prevention programs?
That question spurred a debate Wednesday as a Utah House committee discussed a bill that would expand suicide prevention resources to younger children amid the mental health crisis.
More Utah youth ages 10 to 24 die from suicide than any other cause, bill sponsor Rep. Brian King, D-Salt Lake City, told members of the House Health and Human Services Committee. It s remarkable to contemplate that a little under 20% of Utah high schoolers have made a plan to commit suicide, he said. And we re concerned about our rate of Utah youth suicides.
31 Jan 2021
Republican-led states, such as Utah, are pushing for legislation that seeks to protect pregnant women and their unborn babies.
Utah Rep. Brady Brammer (R) is sponsoring HB 113, a bill that would ensure biological fathers are financially responsible for half of the mother’s out-of-pocket pregnancy costs. The measure passed a Utah House committee Wednesday, 8-1.
The
Salt Lake Tribune said Brammer hopes the legislation increases “the responsibility for men in the bringing of life into the world.”
“Oftentimes there’s this battle between pro-life and pro-choice where some of the pro-life positions really turn into a perception that it’s just anti-abortion,” Brammer told the state House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. “I kind of got sick of those things and I thought what could we do that’s really a pro-life thing? … and so that’s where this bill came from.”
HB113 would allow pregnant women to seek payment for half of out-of-pocket pregnancy and delivery bills and insurance premiums from the biological father.
| Updated: 2:57 p.m.
A bill now before the state Legislature would compel Utah women seeking an abortion to watch an online course displaying “medically-accurate” images of the procedure and then attest under penalty of perjury that they’ve viewed the presentation from start to finish.
Completing this online module is already a mandatory step before an abortion in Utah although right-wing advocates argue the current informed process is too porous and believe women might be skimming over or skipping the course. But abortion rights groups see these new proposed restrictions as yet another episode in a long campaign to block access to pregnancy-ending procedures in Utah.