Republican senator breaks with GOP to oppose 15-week abortion bill in Virginia
Despite backers characterizing Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposal to largely ban abortions after 15 weeks in Virginia as “a consensus” position, a Senate panel Friday rejected it, with one Republican joining unanimous Democratic opposition.
“I wish I could vote for this bill,” said Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, R-Henrico, a practicing OB-GYN who proposed an amendment to the administration bill that would have allowed exceptions up to 24 weeks for fetuses with severe abnormalities. “But without that exception, I’m going to have to vote” against it.
The Friday morning votes on three bills that would have restricted to varying degrees Virginia’s current abortion laws were not binding: The Democrat-dominated Senate Health Professions Subcommittee only has the power to recommend legislative positions to the larger Health and Education Committee. But they signal little appetite among Democrats to brook any change to the state’s abortion laws, which allow the procedure through the first and second trimesters with few restrictions and permit it in the third if three doctors decide continuing the pregnancy would pose a severe risk to the mother.
Dunnavant called that law “extreme,” arguing Virginia is out of step with laws across the U.S. and Europe as well as medical science on fetal age of viability. Under her Senate Bill 1483, abortion would remain legal up to “viability,” defined as 24 weeks or “at least 22” in the estimation of three doctors. Dunnavant’s bill would also require abortions be performed only in hospitals, mirroring the current law on the second and third trimesters.
Abortion would also be allowed if the pregnancy was nonviable and going forward with it “would substantially and irremediably impair the physical health of the woman.”
https://www.virginiamercury.com/2023/01/20/republican-senator-breaks-with-gop-to-oppose-15-week-abortion-bill-in-virginia/
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