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From ADF and The News and Advance:
Key votes expected today on two abortion measures
Credit: BOB BROWN/TIMES-DISPATCH
By: | Lynchburg News and Advance
Published: February 28, 2012
Updated: February 28, 2012 - 6:43 AM
Published: February 28, 2012
Updated: February 28, 2012 - 6:43 AM
The future of two abortion-related bills already passed by the House of Delegates hangs in the balance today in the Republican-controlled Virginia Senate.
The issue seems to be whether the chamber's 20 Republicans are willing to maintain unity on precedent-setting legislation driven by their most conservative wing.
On the Senate floor today, the chamber is expected to vote on amended legislation that would force women seeking abortions to first submit to an ultrasound.
And in the Senate Finance Committee, senators are said to be divided on whether to approve a bill that would deny state money to low-income women who seek abortions in cases where the fetus is determined to have grossly incapacitating birth defects.
The Senate vote on the ultrasound measure, House Bill 462, sponsored by Del. Kathy J. Byron, R-Campbell, was postponed Monday when word leaked that a Republican senator was poised to make a motion to send the bill back to committee, stalling it for the year.
Sen. Stephen H. Martin, R-Chesterfield, the chairman of the GOP-controlled Education and Health Committee, requested the delay. Martin's committee, stocked with anti-abortion Republicans, has passed several measures favored by anti-abortion advocates — and it already has seen one of them kicked back by the full Senate and scuttled for the year.
Late last week, House Bill 1 — the so-called personhood bill that would have granted legal rights to fertilized eggs — made it to the Senate floor before centrist Republicans joined Democrats to have the bill recommitted to the Education and Health Committee for consideration in 2013.
Two Republicans joined Democrats in a similar action Monday on a bill that would have eliminated the requirement that female schoolchildren be vaccinated for protection from human papillomavirus.
The ultrasound legislation also has created concerns for some members of the Senate Republican caucus, which took disputed control of the Senate this year with 20 Republicans and the tiebreaking vote of Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling.
The original form of the bill called for every woman to have an ultrasound before having an abortion. Because most abortions take place during the first trimester, the bill would have required, in most cases, a vaginal probe to determine the gestational age of the fetus.
As public opposition — and national ridicule from late-night comedians — over the invasiveness of the procedure mounted, Gov. Bob McDonnell proposed amendments to the measure that would only require abdominal ultrasounds and make it optional for a woman to have a transvaginal ultrasound.
Supporters of the bill — most of them opposed to abortion — say the measure simply seeks to put into state code the use of updated technology to improve the informed consent procedure used when a woman has an abortion.
But opponents maintain that the measure is not medically necessary, interjects the government into the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship, and is a thinly veiled attempt to discourage women from going through with the procedure.
Physicians groups also have expressed concern that the law could indirectly compel ultrasounds of women who had miscarriages.
Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel, R-Fauquier — who sponsored a companion version in the Senate that was amended and passed by the House of Delegates — had her bill stricken Friday, citing concerns over the broader implications of the measure.
The upheaval has led to fevered lobbying of lawmakers from anti-abortion advocates and abortion-rights groups. Scores of abortion-rights supporters gathered Monday night behind the Executive Mansion for a vigil urging McDonnell, who opposes abortion, to back off his support of the bill.
While McDonnell said Friday that he supports the amended version of the bill, senators on both sides of the issue interviewed Monday said the vote was in flux.
Similar handicapping was under way on the fate of House Bill 62, sponsored by Del. Mark L. Cole, R-Spotsylvania, which would strip funding for abortions for low-income women who have fetuses with "gross, totally incapacitating physical deformity or mental deficiency."
Last year the state spent about $3,000 on 10 such abortions.
Republicans have a 9-6 edge on the Senate Finance Committee, but Democrats were cautiously optimistic the bill could be halted.
"We're doing our best to try and save the commonwealth," said Sen. Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax.
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