The Republican-led Virginia House of Delegates yesterday voted 64-34 to advance a ‘personhood’ bill, which would give full personhood rights to a fertilized egg at the moment of conception. The action sets the stage for a final House vote on the legislation today. If the House passes the bill, the Senate will review and vote on it.
Del. Bob Marshall, R-Manassas, has proposed House Bill 1 on three separate occasions, including once in 2007 when it failed to pass the House and again in 2011 when it passed in the House but failed in the Senate, which the Democrats then controlled, he said.
Democratic delegates voiced concerns yesterday in a House press release, saying the bill would affect the legality of birth control and other forms of contraception.
The personhood bill would open “families and doctors to a wide variety of criminal and civil lawsuits for health care decisions not only in cases of unwanted pregnancies, but every pregnancy and even miscarriage,” Democrats said in the press release.
Marshall, however, said the legislation would not affect birth control or abortion, but instead would change the way courts define a person.
“The legal effect here is [if] a pregnant woman is driving in an intersection and someone runs into her, she can sue for loss of a child,” Marshall said. “Under the current code, a mother cannot do that. [The bill] has no direct legal effect on abortion or birth control.”
Del. Vivian Watts, D-Fairfax, unsuccessfully fought to include an exception for access to basic birth control in the legislation, Watts spokesperson Deborah Sherman said.
Public Health Prof. Lois Shepherd, also a professor in the Law School, said support of the bill may be a symbolic gesture for delegates who want to display a pro-life stance.
“[The bill] would not really have a practical effect,” Shepherd said, since the legislation would not override federal protections for abortion and contraception.
Shepherd said the personhood bill, like previous bills in Virginia and other states mandating ultrasounds or waiting periods for women considering abortions, is part of a broad conservative effort to “incrementally … chip away at abortion rights.”
Personhood initiatives have been voted down recently in other states, including in Mississippi where a ballot initiative failed last November. If Virginia enacts this legislation, it would be the first state to include embryos in the legal definition of personhood.
Ignorance and misinformation sure do flourish at UVA whenever their political agenda comes into play. Here we have Monika Fallon and Abby Meredith showing their pro abortion colors as they fail to mention that this trigger bill has a Senate patron who is a democrat. Naturally, they also fail to mention that the bill reflects the facts of medical science that applied to their lives as well as everyone elses. Medical science is the enemy.
Just as clueless, Lois Shepherd does not realize that this would remove Virginia from the list of three states that legalized infanticide before Roe/Wade made it allowable on a federal basis. No doubt, she probably is just as eager to keep our tripled breast cancer rate and doubled preterm birth rate a secret in her Public Health courses also. Knowledge is dangerous.
Topping off the misinformation and ignorance in this article, all three of them fail to mention that Missouri has had a similar statute on the books for over 20 years, backed by a Supreme Court ruling, that has resulted in none of the silly predictions mentioned by those who can only resort to scare tactics.
UVA students were also very upset by the Emancipation Proclamation. It’s no surprise that Cavalier Daily writers are abortion cheerleaders, but they could at least make the tiniest of efforts to be factual.
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This is obviously an attempt to make abortion appear to be murder under the law. A fertilized egg is not a person. It may eventually become a person, but that happens later as the embryo matures. But first the cells begin to divide and differentiate into organs, the embryo becomes a fetus with recognizable human attributes, and eventually a baby is born.
At some point in this process, a person comes into being. To be a living person means to experience yourself and your environment. But that is not the case when there are only 2 cells, or 64 cells, or 256 cells. It happens later.
I believe that is why Roe v. Wade allows a woman the unrestricted right to abort during the first 13 week trimester. Beyond that point, abortions may be allowed only due to extraordinary circumstances.
The suggestion that you have to redefine a fertilized egg as a person in order to allow an injured pregnant woman to sue seems disingenuous. I’m not a lawyer, but I believe one can sue for any damage resulting from another’s wrongful act, which would include the loss of an embryo. You don’t have to pretend the embryo is already a person to do that.
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Not to make things more complicated, but I feel as though your argument is weakened by your flawed definition of a living person. By your definition, any severely mentally disabled individual who does not have the ability to “experience” themselves or their environment in the same way you and I do is not a living person. Many would argue the opposite.
Life itself does begin at conception — that is a fact of biology. Abortion always ends the life of an individual human being. Every honest abortion advocate agrees with this simple fact. Perhaps you are pro-choice, and that’s completely fine…but let’s not forget that the reason you are here now is because your mother CHOSE to be pro-life.
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Anonymous, if you are referring to a brain dead person, then I believe that person no longer exists. I think you’re describing the point at which a person is pronounced “dead”. The body may still have some functioning, reflex actions may continue, etc. but the person is gone.
In a similar fashion, the egg and sperm produce a 2 celled body that begins cell division, but there is no person present at that point. The person appears later, after the brain and nervous system reach a certain maturity.
The fertilized egg is a form of human life, but it is not a living human being or person yet. If all goes well, the fertilized egg will eventually become a human life, sometime between conception and birth.
By the way, everybody is pro-life. And I suspect that most people would prefer not to have to choose to abort their pregnancy. But sometimes the abortion seems the lesser of two harms.
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Slave traders employed the exact same anti-science and anti-logic at UVA 150 years ago. Blacks were just “potential” humans that could someday become fully civilized persons. Yet even slave owners like Jefferson could never fathom the brutality of killing even a black infant in utero. Sally Hemming gave birth, and Jefferson had nine months to think about it. Then as now, it is astonishing that we have “people” (I’m not so sure) who support beheadings and dismemberment of the unwanted. This in the year 2012! It’s murder by numbers, 1-2-3. It’s as easy to learn as your ABC’s.
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“I will maintain the utmost respect for human life, from the time of its conception; even under threat, I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity; I will practice my profession with conscience and dignity.”
Declaration of Geneva
Hippocratic Oath
Following the Nazi Doctors Trial at Nuremberg
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I found the CDC site for reproductive health. They run an “abortion surveillance” system to collect statistics on abortions. Here’s the link:
http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/data_stats/index.htm
If you open the 2008 report they have tables showing the breakdown of abortions state by state, by weeks of gestation, etc. Most abortions are performed in the first 8 weeks. More than 90% are within the first trimester.
One of the surpising things, though, is the sheer number of abortions performed in a year, over 800,000. Abortion needs to remain an option, but it should never be considered the primary means of birth control.
Education and counseling about sexual reproduction and how to avoid it should be emphasized in schools and by physicians.
Abortions are not harmless. There is some risk of complications in future pregnancies. I’m sure Sean can provide more information, if he decides to provide information instead of just propaganda.
Everyone should be working to reduce the frequency of abortions.
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This issue is too complicated to be left to polititions. Americans have different religious and philosopical differences on this subject that must be respected. I understand the Morman Church has a more tollerant policy on abortion than Catholics–abortion can be allowed for rape/incest, life/health-saving medical reasons, or when the baby would not live long after birth. A “personhood law” would create a legal and medical nightmare. I don’t understand why the party of “small government” continually tries to interfere in a personal moral and medical issue. These politicians don’t know individual circumstances and would not be around to pick up the pieces when they force a women into making medically unsound decisions and interfer with the doctor-patient relationshiop. This policy would also not allow certain common birth control methods which would prevent the option of abortion to begin with. “Just say NO!” to this political grandstanding in an already crazy election year.
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Senate Bill 277 passed yesterday by a vote of 22-18. This is the bill forbidding forced and coerced abortions, and enabling prosecution of those that threaten and/or coerce a woman into having an abortion. Completely removing the mask of “pro choice,” 18 senators voted AGAINST this bill in a state where women have already been blown up and stabbed to death for not doing as they were told and killing their children. The Cav Daily and the rest of the pro abortion media has ignored the bill altogether.
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I don’t get it, Sean. How can anyone be forced to have an abortion against their will? Have there been any actual cases of this?
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You don’t get out much, do you Marvin?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lupwGylGH0c
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Okay, I see what’s going on about the “coercion”. There’s a mccl.org site where they broadly define coercion to include the influence of a husband or boyfriend urging an abortion. Based on that kind of definition, they claim that 64% of women are subject to “some sort” of coercion.
Looking at SB277, the original version had loose language, which might have included “some sort” of external influence, but was tightened up to include only physical harm of the threat of physical harm.
I suspect those who voted against this bill saw through the attempt to penalize anyone who simply urged the woman to consider an abortion. I’m pretty sure that physical harm is already a crime without SB277.
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Sean, I checked out the youtube you posted. It appears the guy is being prosecuted under existing law, so SB277 or something like it would be unnecessary. That’s what I was suggesting earlier. By putting the drug in her drink and causing the unwanted abortion he has harmed the woman.
If the fetus had matured beyond 13 weeks, then perhaps one could argue a case for murder of the person in her womb. If it were in the third trimester rather than the first trimester, the case may have been even more obvious. I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know for sure.
But even SB277 only addresses the harm to the woman. I presume that a lot of things would implicitly change if the personhood at conception constitutional amendment were to pass.
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Nice try brah!
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