A Democratic-led House panel on Wednesday defeated two Republican proposals seeking to limit access to abortions in Virginia.
House Bill 1184, sponsored by Del. Phillip Scott, R-Spotsylvania County, would have prohibited terminating pregnancies based on the sex or ethnicity of a fetus. The more sweeping measure was HB 1364, introduced by Del. Tim Griffin, R-Bedford County, which would have banned all abortions outright, with no exceptions for rape and incest, unless the procedure is necessary to save a mother’s life.
Griffin told the members of a House Courts of Justice Committee that his bill could save tens of thousands of lives this year, and “millions of lives” over the course of a generation. “Today, you have the opportunity to make history, and to protect children and young mothers, and put an end to this crisis in the commonwealth of Virginia,” Griffin said.
The 2024 General Assembly session marks the second after the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision in June 2021 that returned the authority over women’s reproductive rights back to the states. Following that ruling, Gov. Glenn Youngkin pushed for legislation that would have limited access to abortion after three months into a pregnancy.
Last year, then-Sen. Steve Newman, R-Bedford County, sponsored Youngkin’s signature legislation, which Senate Democrats defeated along with a more extreme measure sponsored by Sen. Travis Hackworth, R-Tazewell County, that would have banned abortion altogether.
While Hackworth’s proposal, unlike Griffin’s bill, would have allowed for several exceptions, both measures would have anchored into law that life begins at conception. “We know that the spark of life begins when the sperm fertilizes the egg, and together they form a zygote, and we know that from that moment the zygote is scientifically human,” Griffin told the committee on Wednesday.
Griffin then laid out several abortion procedures in graphic detail, stating that his bill would stop the ending of human life through terminated pregnancies. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere. Today we make clear that the safest place for a Virginia baby should be in her mother’s womb, and we take care of the weakest among us,” Griffin said.
The hearing turned contentious when Scott protested the decision by Del. Patrick Hope, D-Arlington, the committee chair, to hear both abortion-related proposals at the same time.
“It is very clear that there is a bias already established here in the room tonight, just by the fact that we are not allowed to present our bills on their own merit, but by being presented together,” Scott said. “My bill is a different bill and I’d prefer to present it on its own.”
While Scott’s measure would have prohibited abortions based on gender and race, it stopped short of seeking to ban the procedure altogether.
“Currently, if you are a parent but you don’t want a girl, you could go to an abortionist and terminate that pregnancy, just based on the gender, or based on race,” Scott said. “That’s not fair to the child to be aborted for something that they had no part of. Unborn boys and unborn girls deserve the same protection, and unborn children of all ethnicities and races deserve the same protection.”
Scott also said that he took offense at the use of the term health care when referring to a woman’s decision to have an abortion. “Abortion always ends with the termination of life. So I don’t like it when the termination of life is called health care. That’s mincing words and changing definitions, and we should be very careful when we do that.”
Both proposals received support from several anti-abortion advocates, including Jeff Caruso, who spoke on behalf of the Virginia Catholic Conference. “Every human life, born and unborn, deserves legal protection. Protect the fundamental right to life, which is the right on which every other human right depends,” Caruso said.
Jessi Blakely, a lobbyist with the Family Foundation of Virginia, which supported both bills, said she was hoping that Scott’s measure would “end eugenics” in the commonwealth.
“This bill prevents abortion on the basis of race and sex, and I hope we all find that a termination of life on these grounds be fundamentally abhorrent. No born or pre-born Virginian should lose their life on account of immutable characteristics,” Blakey said.
Eleven states have already banned abortion on the basis of sex, and five ban abortion on the basis of race, Blakey added. “In populations where this practice is common, including places in Europe, birth rates indicate that the preference for male children is much higher, which leads to the compounding population imbalance.”
Susan Muskett, president of Pro-Family Women, said relating to Scott’s bill that “sex selection by abortion, which does take place here in America, is the ultimate form of discrimination” based on gender.
“It has been called the real war on women, because it often results in aborting baby girls because there is a cultural preference for baby boys,” Muskett said, adding that her group also supported Griffin’s proposal because they believed that human life begins at conception. “We believe that all life, from conception until natural death, should be protected under the law,” she said.
And Olivia Turner, president of the Virginia Society for Human Life, thanked Griffin for bringing forward the issue of life at conception, “for the simple reason that we are at a point scientifically where we know that the unborn child is a member of the human family and should be at least a point of conversation in this esteemed body.”
However, abortion rights advocates outnumbered their opponents at Wednesday’s hearing. Galina Varchena with Birth in Color called the proposed measures stigmatizing and harmful, “because they are inserting politics in a place where it does not belong.”
Gabriella Watson of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice stressed that every person has the right to decide if and when to become a parent. “Important personal and medical decisions should remain between a patient and their provider, free from political interference. As we have seen these harmful efforts already have and will continue to disproportionately harm Latinas and other communities of color,” Watson said.
Lexi White with REPRO Rising Virginia said that the bans before the committee were part of “a larger campaign to stigmatize abortion care, to punish patients and providers, and to push yet another means of controlling people’s bodies, lives and reproductive decision making.”
And Jamie Lockhardt, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia, added that abortion bans take away people’s abilities to make decisions about their bodies, their lives, their health and their futures. “We know that Virginians don’t want this. Virginians have spoken loud and clearly that they support people’s ability to make their own healthcare decisions, they don’t believe politicians should be involved,” Lockhardt said.
Griffin evaded several poignant questions from committee members on potential exceptions under his bill, and he did not give a clear answer to whether a 10-year-old rape victim would be forced to carry her baby to term.
“This is a bill to protect unborn children and their mothers. It’s as simple as that,” Griffin said. “I outlined for you some of the terrible tragedies that happen under current law, and how this bill would stop that.”
But the committee didn’t buy it, voting to reject Griffin’s proposal with a unanimous 8-0 vote. The panel also voted against advancing Scott’s measure by a 5-3 party-line vote.
“It is not lost on me that the multitude of people that have come to speak in opposition to the bill are women, and the people bringing this forward and speaking in favor are men,” said Del. Michelle Lopes Maldonado, D-Prince William County, a member of the committee. “This happens time and time again where men continue to tell women what, where and how they can do with their bodies, and what choices they have around developing families.”