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

State Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery) is behind the proposal, which would allow Ohioans to count embryos or fetuses as dependents if they were conceived during the tax year.

“I have introduced a bill, look for the acronym here, it’s called ‘Strategic Tax Opportunities for Child-Raising: STORK,'” Click said in a video posted on his X page (formerly Twitter).

“You can deduct your child from your taxes in the year of conception rather than the year of birth… And that will give young families a head start.”

“Any parent can tell you that the costs of raising children begin to pile up long before a baby is born. We absolutely should support young families. Passing this bill will be a simple step in that direction,” Click said in a statement..

Newsweek reached out to Click via its website and an Ohio Democrat spokesperson via email on Wednesday outside of work hours for comment on the proposal, which has not yet been assigned to a committee.

The bill is one of several laws recognizing the personhood of the fetus that have sparked heated debate in the United States.

In 2021, a federal fetal personification bill, the Life at Conception Act, was introduced in Congress, granting embryos and fetuses a constitutional “right to life” from the moment of conception.

Abortion opponents praise this as a step towards greater legal recognition of unborn children.

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

Critics argue that Click’s proposal is a thinly veiled attempt to undermine abortion rights by gradually granting personhood to fetuses.

Pregnancy Justice, a pregnancy rights advocacy group, explains on its website: “The theory of the fetus as a legal person has become the framework of anti-abortion states. It was also highlighted in U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs. This created a path for an argument for the fetus’ right to life under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments…Fetus personification alters the legal rights and status of pregnant people, forcing them to give up their own personification.”

Newsweek I emailed Pregnancy Justice outside of business hours on Wednesday for further comment.

Prof. Mary Ziegler, Martin Luther King Professor of Law at UC Davis and author of Roe: The Story of a National Obsession, spoke with Newsweek by phone call on Wednesday regarding her opinion on Click’s bill.

“In theory, I don’t think many people object to recognizing fetuses as persons, as long as it doesn’t lead to criminalizing the behavior of doctors or pregnant patients.

“In other contexts or even in Europe, I don’t think this would be a particularly worrying circumstance because I think in other countries people have found ways to say that the law values ​​the life of the fetus without that necessarily leading to criminalization.”

“But I think that in the United States, a lot of what you see when you see laws recognizing fetal rights in non-criminal contexts or in contexts outside of abortion is 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 made explicit.

“There’s a document called The New North Star Letter signed by the leaders of a number of major anti-abortion groups in the US that makes this clear. I think that changes the calculus, you’re not just talking about whether you think it’s a good thing for pregnant women to potentially have these kinds of services, but you’re also talking about whether it might lead to other outcomes that you might not support.

I think that’s the complexity of the problem in the United States.”

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

“I think the challenge is that there is such a history in the United States. The most obvious example is that many states, including progressive states, have passed laws saying that the murder of a pregnant woman is two murders, not just one.”

“These laws are popular because people can say, ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to criminalise abortion or IVF, but I see that in some contexts it’s good for the law to recognise the value of fetal life.’ And there are situations where you don’t get the impression that you’re against it, that there’s some necessary tension between recognizing the rights of fetuses and unborn children in some contexts and at least supporting that abortion is not a crime.

“The challenge is that there is a social movement that wants to see these laws as a step in that direction, even if they agree with some Americans that fetal life is valuable. It’s kind of a catch-22, in the sense that there are Americans who might be OK with the idea that you can claim unborn children as dependents on your tax return, but they would disagree with the broader strategy that this and other lawmakers are taking in promoting these laws.”