Personhood bill fails; abortion bill advances

Acting with unusual speed, the Virginia Senate unceremoniously tabled a bill declaring that life begins at conception, just hours after it was approved by a Senate committee on Thursday.

Senators Thomas Norment, R-James City County, and Richard Saslaw, D-Fairfax County, proposed that the so-called "personhood" bill, HB1, be sent back to the Senate Education and Health Committee and be passed by for the year. Their proposal passed 24-14, with four Republicans voting yes.

The vote means the legislation can't be reconsidered this year.

The bill, by Del. Bob Marshall, R-Prince William County, is one of several anti-abortion measures proposed by Republicans that have generated a backlash from critics.

Marshall said he was not surprised by the move but was "annoyed" that it occurred within hours of the committee vote. Even Democrats, who applauded the vote, complained that it was rushed to the floor.

Marshall said the parliamentary move "could not have taken place without the tacit agreement" of Gov. Bob McDonnell and Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling.

"What they have told rank-and-file Republicans by doing this is that their concerns don't matter," he said.

McDonnell spokesman Tucker Martin declined to react to the vote. Instead, he repeated what the administration had already stated publicly: "We've said... if the bill passed, we would review it."

Sen. Frank Wagner, R-Virginia Beach, voted to table the bill. He said he did so in part because of questions raised by officials at Eastern Virginia Medical School's Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine, who said they were worried that the bill might imperil in-vitro fertilization.

"We heard a lot of questions being raised about the bill by very prominent physicians," Wagner said.

Sen. Harry Blevins, R-Chesapeake, who hours earlier had voted for the bill in the Senate committee, also voted to table the measure.

Anti-abortion advocates appeared to have scored a pair of victories at the committee level when both the personhood bill and another requiring women to undergo an external ultrasound before an abortion passed on 8-7, party-line votes, with Republicans in the majority.

The votes came as hundreds of people outside the General Assembly Building protested anti-abortion efforts, and tempers flared inside.

Sen. Stephen H. Martin, R-Chesterfield County, the committee chair, twice threatened to have opponents of both bills ejected after outbursts.

As Marshall began to answer questions from reporters outside the Senate committee room, several dozen abortion-rights supporters began to drown him out, chanting "shame, shame."

Capitol Police officers restrained several protesters as they moved toward Marshall. All were quickly escorted out of the General Assembly Building, and no one was arrested.

Shortly before the House and Senate went into session, abortion-rights demonstrators lined both sides of the sidewalk leading from the General Assembly Building to the Capitol. They cheered Democrats and hissed at Republicans as they walked to the session.

The debate on abortion has focused national attention on Virginia.

Saslaw said Thursday's drama was the GOP's fault.

"I hope these guys get the message and stop trying to repeal the 20th century," he said of Republicans in a statement released by Democratic officials. "I'm tired of Virginia being compared to Mississippi. This kind of legislation is making our state a national embarrassment."

Marshall said his bill is nearly identical to a Missouri law, with the exception of a provision that he says expressly protects in-vitro fertilization. However, Norment told the Senate that after watching much of the committee debate that "there are more legal complexities to this issue than I was aware of."

Sen. Charles W. Carrico, R-Galax, told the committee he was in favor of the legislation because of a personal tragedy. In 2005, three relatives, including a pregnant woman, were killed in Smyth County when an armed intruder entered their home.

Prosecutors were unable to file murder charges for the death of the unborn child. They would have been able to do so if the personhood bill was law, he said.

"This person had a name," Carrico said of the woman's unborn child. "It was Joseph Bradley Evans."

Emotions were similarlyintense over an effort to require women to undergo an ultrasound before they have an abortion.

In its original form, the ultrasound bill was written in such a way that it could have required women to have an ultrasound that involved the insertion of a vaginal probe.

As public outcry and national backlash to the ultrasound legislation mounted, McDonnell on Wednesday told lawmakers he no longer supported the move to make that kind of ultrasound mandatory.

At McDonnell's request, a bill from Del. Kathy Byron, R-Campbell County, was amended to require only external ultrasounds. The governor's change of course drew criticism from some social conservatives, and some Democrats continued to blast the measure, HB462.

"This bill is still an abomination," said Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax County.

Supporters of the ultrasound requirement defend it as a measure to protect women's health and ensure that women are fully informed before having an abortion.

Debate on Byron's bill begins today. If it passes the full Senate, it would go back to the House of Delegates for another vote because it has been amended.

While Byron's bill moves forward, Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel, R-Fauquier County, has said she will ask the Senate to strike her version of the legislation, SB484.

Wagner said the personhood bill will be studied by the committee for a year and reconsidered in the next session.

In response to critics who said the bill might outlaw contraception, Republicans amended the personhood bill to say: "Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as affecting lawful contraception."

But speaking after the hearing, University of Richmond assistant law professor Meredith Johnson Harbach said the bill, as written, still might threaten the legality of some forms of birth control.

"If life begins at fertilization and you take a drug that prevents implantation of a fertilized egg and causes it to be expelled from a woman's body, is that a killing?" she said. "I think it's an open question. And I think then it goes into the hands of individual prosecutors and commonwealth's attorneys offices to decide whether they want to prosecute."