Lawmaker seeks rewrite of Utah incest statute
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1 Comment [ View ]By JENNIFER DOBNER
The Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY -- A state lawmaker said Wednesday he wants to rewrite Utah's incest statute to make it illegal for adult relatives to provide each other with seminal fluids or human eggs for use in artificial insemination.
Sen. Dennis Stowell, R-Parowan, said his goal is to block inappropriate family relations that produce children with serious birth defects. Stowell also wants to eliminate as a possible criminal defense the claim that no sexual intercourse occurred.
Current incest laws require proof of sexual intercourse and address offenses between adults and children under 18.
Stowell presented a draft bill to a committee, which voted unanimously to forward the bill for consideration during the legislative session that starts in January.
"We had a case of incest in Iron County. In the course of prosecuting, (what) the defense offered was that this incest was done by artificial insemination which is not covered in the law," Stowell said. "This is an attempt to correct that problem."
Stowell said research of incest laws nationwide shows Utah would be the first state to address incest through artificial insemination.
Allegations of incest were brought to sheriff's deputies last year by three men from an Iron County family who feared their father was engaged in an incestuous relationship that had produced at least four children. DNA testing on one of the children -- paid for by the three men -- indicted a high probability that incest had occurred.
But prosecutors did not file charges because they could not get around the insemination defense provided to investigators during interviews with the child's family, Iron County deputy attorney Troy Little said.
"The main issue here is that when we do have offspring, we want to protect that victim," Little told the committee. "This is good public policy, albeit very unusual."
Consanguinity research shows that incest among first-degree relatives has a "highly deleterious" effect on offspring, said John M. Optiz, a University of Utah professor of pediatric genetics.
Studies show children of incest have higher rates of mortality, birth defects and mental retardation, he said.
Stowell said the bill would not apply in cases of surrogacy -- if the surrogate female is not related to the male providing the sperm. It also would increase the statute of limitations for prosecuting incest from four to seven years.
Incest is a third-degree felony punishable by a prison term of up to five years.
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I know how Sen. Dennis Stowell feels. I am against lawyers and politicians inbreeding as well.
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