The bill’s Senate sponsor, Sen. Jen McEwen, DFL-Duluth, declined to explain during a committee hearing Tuesday when she thinks an unborn baby becomes a person.

“It seems the bill would create a fundamental right to an abortion at any time of pregnancy,” said Sen. Jim Abeler, R-Anoka. “Sen. McEwen, in your opinion, when does an unborn baby become a person?”

“Senator, I don’t think that’s an appropriate question. I will not answer that,” she responded.

McEwen later clarified that she didn’t mean to “disparage … the importance of the question to many people.” The point of her bill, she said, is to “make government neutral in these decisions” and to put “into statutory law what currently exists within our case law.”