Virginia Legislators Defeat Multiple Attempts by Planned Parenthood to Expand Abortion

State   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Jan 22, 2018   |   12:48PM   |   Richmond, VA

Virginia lawmakers rejected a series of pro-abortion bills Thursday that would have threatened more unborn babies’ lives.

The three bills, backed by Planned Parenthood and NARAL, would have loosened abortion facility regulations, allowed women to wave a waiting period requirement and ended a requirement that rape victims file a police report to qualify for a taxpayer-funded abortion in Virginia, the AP reports.

The Virginia Senate Committee on Education and Healthy narrowly rejected all three bills on party lines after hearing testimonies from pro-life and pro-abortion advocates, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.

Here’s more from the report:

Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, characterized her bill requiring the Board of Health to fund an abortion in cases of rape or incest without sending a report to law enforcement as protecting survivors. She said survivors often need time to recover from the traumatic experience before making a report to police but may require an abortion right away.

Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, applauded McClellan for bringing the legislation forward, and added that she was probably the only member of the committee who had been a victim of incest.

She addressed the comments of Sen. Richard Black, R-Loudoun, who had expressed concern that the bill would “open the floodgates for state funding of abortion” and would “invite fraud in using state funds in order to fund elective abortions.”

“I don’t think this opens the floodgates to anything other than women ending their victimization,” Locke responded. “And I think that to simply say that women are going to come up and say, ‘Oh, oh, give me an abortion’ … to ease their way out of an unwanted pregnancy is foolhardy.

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However, women have been caught lying to get taxpayer-funded abortions. In 2016, a jury convicted Arizona woman Chalice Renee Zeitner for faking cancer to get taxpayers to pay to abort her 22-week unborn baby. Most states prohibit taxpayer-funded abortions in a majority of cases but allow exceptions in cases of rape, incest and risks to the mother’s life.

By erasing the police report requirement, the Virginia bill could have made it easier for rapists to force or coerce their victims to abort their unborn babies. As LifeNews previously reported, one study found that as many as 64 percent of post-abortive women say they felt pressure to have an abortion. A 2014 study published in PLOS Medicine also found that 25 percent of women who had abortions faced some sort of abuse beforehand, either physical, sexual or emotional.

LifeNews has reported numerous cases where sexual abusers took their victims to abortion facilities to cover up their crimes. One case involved an Ohio soccer coach who was convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl on his team. According to reports, he statutorily raped the girl; and when she became pregnant, he took her to Planned Parenthood to abort their unborn baby and cover up what he had done. The Ohio Planned Parenthood also faced a lawsuit for failing to report the sexual abuse of the young girl.

People should encourage victims of rape and incest to file police reports so that the perpetrator is caught and punished. Unborn babies are second innocent victims in these crimes, not criminals.