Virginia State Senate Committee Continues Tradition of Killing Bills to Limit Abortions 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
February 28, 2008
Richmond, VA (LifeNews.com) — Pro-life advocates have a name for it, "Black Thursday," and that’s the name of the day the Senate Education and Health committee kills the pro-life legislation the state Assembly has approved. Today was no exception as the panel defeated a handful of pro-life bills that would have further limited abortions in Virginia.
The committee defeated every pro-life measure it was presented on mostly party-line votes.
The bills that died included one putting common sense health regulations on abortion centers, another requiring abortion practitioners to allow women to see an ultrasound of the unborn child before the abortion, one giving women information on fetal pain and one making a forced abortion a crime.
"While the votes are never really a surprise, the debate often brings the worst out of pro-abortion liberals on the committee," Chris Freund, the vice president of the Family Foundation, told LifeNews.com.
When discussing another piece of legislation introduced by Delegate Steve Landes dealing with killing pregnant women and their unborn children, a Commonwealth’s Attorney told of a case where a man punched his girlfriend in the stomach until her unborn child died.
Senator Janet Howell responded by saying, "Well, there’s no way of knowing if the fetus would have died anyway from a spontaneous miscarriage."
"To Howell, unborn children are just expendable," Freund said.
But the debate on the legislation didn’t matter.
"The fate of pro-life legislation is sealed before the meeting even begins," Fruend said. "The Ed and Health committee has the assigned task of killing anything pro-life."
Ken Cuccinelli, a leading pro-life senator, agreed.
"The Democrat majority stacked the Ed & Health committee for the sole purpose of killing all pro-life bills, and today their strategy was played out as they killed every single pro-life bill that came before them," he told LifeNews.com.
Still, Freund said proposing and debating the bills is not a matter of going through the motions because of the educational impact and the need to continue fighting until they become law.
