Well, They Did It…
Much to the dismay of every individual who believes that each human life is unique and valuable, Virginia’s new radical pro-abortion legislative majority passed an alarmingly extremist abortion bill – HB 980 – last week, which brings us one step closer to having zero restrictions on abortion.
Specifically, this bill removes three reasonable protective measures that protect women and their unborn babies from abortion. First, this legislation removes common-sense safety requirements by expanding who can perform first-trimester abortions to include nurse practitioners and nurse-midwives. Second, it removes nearly all of the requirements for informed consent prior to an abortion, including for the Virginia Department of Health to provide women who are considering abortion with written materials informing them of medically accurate facts regarding their pregnancies, including the development of their unborn children as well as the different types of abortions and the risks associated with each. It also removes the requirement that a woman be given 24-hours to consider the information and for an ultrasound be performed prior to any abortion, along with an express offer for the mother to view the ultrasound image and hear the fetal heart tones prior to making the unfortunate and irreversible decision to abort her child. Third, it removes ALL of the health and safety requirements spelled out in the regulations established in 2011, and therefore effectively removes all oversight and accountability from Virginia’s abortion clinics.
While the abortion lobby famously touts their campaign to provide women with unfettered and unrestricted access to abortion as a way of protecting women, this bill – like most pro-abortion bills – does everything but keep women safe. In fact, the regulations establishing abortion facilities as hospitals help to ensure health and safety standards are met. Furthermore, since both abortions and the use of abortion drugs – like Mifepristone – can cause life-threatening complications, it is clearly in the best interest of all women who undergo abortions to have all life-saving measures readily available just in case an emergency occurs.
Pro-abortion groups maintain that protective laws are burdensome to women seeking an abortion. However, just the opposite is true. In fact, last September, in a U.S. District Court decision, Judge Henry Hudson upheld the very requirements that are being removed by HB 980 by ruling that none of these laws are burdensome and that they should be allowed to stand. In that 10-day trial, the abortion industry did not put forward even a single claim or piece of evidence to demonstrate that any woman had been burdened in any way by these standards. Additionally, the Supreme Court has never ruled that these laws present an “undue burden” on a woman seeking an abortion.
It isn’t just the liberal Left in Virginia that is working feverishly to remove all protections for the unborn. In fact, last week two abortion bills failed to obtain the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate. The first bill, the Pain-Capable Unborn Protection Act, which ended in a 53-44 vote, would ban abortion after 20 weeks except in cases of rape and incest or to protect the life of the mother. This bill is based on the agreement within the scientific community that an unborn baby can feel pain at the five-month mark when the nerve endings have spread to all parts of the skin and tissue. Additionally, it is at this stage when babies have the highest number of pain receptors per square inch. I find it astonishing that 44 people in the United States think aborting a child is acceptable under these circumstances, and it really blows my mind to know that 44 out of 100 U.S. Senators think it’s okay to abort a child at 20 weeks. What’s even crazier is that the United States is only one of seven countries in the world where an unborn child can be killed by elective abortion after 20 weeks, which puts us in the same category as China and North Korea – two of the world’s most notorious human rights violators.
The second bill that was considered is the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would require abortion providers to “exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as a reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age.” This bill failed to advance due to a 56-41 vote. Again, it’s shocking that anyone in America – the land of the free and the home of the brave – would vote against banning infanticide. Jacqueline Ayers, Planned Parenthood’s vice president of government relations and public policy, said that “these bills push misinformation meant to end access to abortion, and serve no other purpose than to shame patients and deny people the ability to make the best medical decisions for themselves and their families.” What kind of world are we living in when allowing an infant to die following a botched abortion qualifies as “the best medical decision” for anyone’s family?
The fact that the Left continues to vote against these common-sense measures, despite the medical and scientific evidence that supports the need for them, is evidence that they are motivated by their desire to keep the dollars from the pro-abortion lobby flowing into their coffers. There is no other reasonable explanation.
