Outrage mounted to a fever-pitch Wednesday as conservatives voiced opposition to a new bill proposed in the Virginia legislature that would’ve allowed abortions up to 40 weeks of pregnancy and permit abortions outside of a hospital during the second trimester.
Virginia Democrat Delegate Kathy Tran, who proposed the currently defeated bill, explained in a viral video during a subcommittee hearing last week that the bill would also allow women to decide if they want to have an abortion as they dilate ahead of giving birth.
In the video, chairman of the subcommittee, Delegate Todd Gilbert asked Tran, “How late in the third trimester could a physician perform an abortion?”
Tran explained to him that the bill, Virginia House Bill 2491 known as the Repeal Act, would eliminate current restrictions on late-term abortions and allow abortions up until 40 weeks.
“Through the third trimester. The third trimester goes all the way up to forty weeks … I don’t think we have a limit in the bill,” she responds pointedly.
“Where it’s obvious a woman is about to give birth?” Gilbert asked. Even when “she has physical signs that she is about to give birth? She’s dilating?”
“My bill would allow that, yes,” Tran said.
The bill will not move forward out of the subcommittee, Gilbert told Live Action.
The video, which has been making the rounds on social media, drew swift condemnation from conservatives such as Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley.
“What is happening in our country. This literally makes me sick to my stomach…. #AdoptionIsAlwaysAnOption,” she tweeted Tuesday with a clip of the exchange between Tran and Gilbert.
Denny Burk, associate professor of biblical studies at Boyce College, the undergraduate arm of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary who also serves as associate pastor at Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, called the proposal an “atrocity”.
“If you are pro-choice and this shocks you, you need to know that Roe v. Wade and its companion decision Doe v. Bolton make this kind of atrocity into a constitutional right,” he noted on Twitter.
In addition to allowing abortions up until 40 weeks, The Repeal Act would have eliminated all the procedures and processes, such as the performance of an ultrasound, required to effect a woman’s informed written consent to the performance of an abortion. Informed written consent, however, would still be required for an abortion.
The bill also wouldn’t have required more than one physician to certify that a third trimester abortion is necessary to prevent a woman’s death or impairment of her mental or physical health.
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SOURCE: Christian Post, Leonardo Blair
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