'It's Christ or chaos': Idaho's newest family policy center and its biblical beliefs [View all]

By this date in 2021, the Idaho Family Policy Center did not exist as an organization.

Less than a year later, it became the organization to help draft and push three of the biggest and most controversial pieces of legislation during the 2022 session — a bill banning most abortions in Idaho by allowing civil lawsuits against medical providers, a bill making it a felony to provide gender care to a minor, and a bill holding librarians criminally accountable for children accessing “obscene materials.”

Gov. Brad Little signed Senate Bill 1309, the abortion bill, into law in early April, but the Idaho Supreme Court issued a stay on the law’s implementation pending other court rulings. The two other bills did not receive hearings in the Idaho Senate.

This session wasn’t the first time the center’s president, Blaine Conzatti, could boast legislative achievements. In 2021, he led the way to pass House Bill 366, a law prohibiting abortion when cardiac activity is detected in a fetus, which is often by six weeks of pregnancy. He also helped craft a bill that became law prohibiting the use of public funds for abortion, and in 2020, he helped pass a bill called “Simon’s Law” which requires notice to parents if a medical professional decides to withhold treatment from a child.

This year, the three bills Conzatti pushed for dominated conversations around the Legislature from February to March.

Read more: https://idahocapitalsun.com/2022/04/26/its-christ-or-chaos-idahos-newest-family-policy-center-and-its-biblical-beliefs/