BISMARCK, N.D. — The North Dakota House of Representatives Education Committee on Monday amended a resolution that would have recognized pornography as a “public health hazard,” instead replacing that language with a call for further study into whether such a designation is appropriate.
SCR 4017 was introduced in January and approved by the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee in February. The resolution’s original language called pornography a “critical public health issue.” It asserted that pornographic materials “perpetuate the demand for sex trafficking, prostitution, child pornography, and sexual abuse images” and claimed that “pornography has been linked to detrimental health effects, including brain development complications, emotional and medical afflictions, the inability to form and maintain intimate relationships, and sexual addiction.”
On Monday, the House Education Committee heard testimony from the North Dakota Family Alliance Legislative Action and the North Dakota Catholic Conference. Both strongly condemned pornography, linked it with a wide variety of social ills and urged passage of the resolution.
Representative Cynthia Schreiber-Beck, however, observed that pornography “does not fulfill the public health field’s definition of a public health crisis.”
“After doing some research… this doesn’t really fly,” Schreiber-Beck told the committee.
She then proposed amending the resolution so that, instead of recognizing pornography as a public health hazard, it would call for a study “to determine if we should be calling pornography in North Dakota a public health hazard.”
The motion passed the committee by a vote of 10-4.
Concurrent resolutions are not bills, and do not carry the force of law. However, such resolutions may later be cited in actual bills as representing the belief or conclusions of the legislature, laying the groundwork for specific action.
Between 2016 and 2020, numerous states declared pornography to be a public health crisis, as passing such resolutions became somewhat of a legislative trend.
Numerous health and medical authorities have debunked this claim, including in a study published by the American Public Health Association.
The authors of that study wrote, “The movement to declare pornography a public health crisis is rooted in an ideology that is antithetical to many core values of public health promotion, and is a political stunt, not reflective of best available evidence.”
Since then, some states have even attempted to require adult sites to display pseudoscientific “public health warnings” as part of age verification mandates. The United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit struck down such a provision in Texas — though it upheld the AV law itself, in a pivotal case now awaiting a decision before the Supreme Court.