Senate panel votes to limit state-paid abortions

A Senate committee on Thursday approved a bill that would strip state funding from poor women who seek abortions of fetuses with life-threatening or incapacitating abnormalities and defects.

The vote on House Bill 62 was 8-7 along party lines in the Republican-controlled Senate Education and Health Committee, the first hurdle to passage in the evenly divided Senate, which already has passed a bill requiring women seeking abortions to have ultrasounds.

Passage Thursday followed more than 30 minutes of emotional testimony from parents representing both sides of the issue — and pointed remarks by Democratic senators, who called the measure a heartless treatment of poor women in distress.

"This is the cruelest bill of all — it's the final blow for women," said Sen. Janet D. Howell, D-Fairfax. "Because what you are saying is a woman must bear a child and watch it suffer. And you are saying that child must suffer."

Sponsored by Del. Mark L. Cole, R-Spotsylvania, the legislation would repeal a decades-old section of the state code authorizing the Board of Health to fund abortions for pregnant women on Medicaid who learn that their fetus has "gross and totally incapacitating physical deformity or mental deficiency."

He said the bill puts Virginia in line with the federal Hyde Amendment, which provides Medicaid funding for abortion only in cases of rape, incest or threats to the mother's life. He said 36 other states have similar laws.

The anti-abortion Republican said the measure does not prohibit women from obtaining an abortion, but just prevents taxpayers who think abortion is immoral from having to pay for them. Last year the state, through Medicaid, funded 10 such procedures at a cost of $3,000. Democratic senators grilled Cole on the bill, questioning who would pay for the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would cost to provide medical treatment to keep alive profoundly ill infants born to poor mothers who could not afford to pay on their own for an abortion.

"This bill appears to target the most vulnerable women among us," said Sen. Mamie E. Locke, D-Hampton. "Why should they be forced to carry a doomed pregnancy to term?"

Anti-abortion Republican lawmakers were mostly quiet on the bill, but anti-abortion advocates from the Catholic Church and other organizations made their case.

Shepherded by the Family Foundation, an Oakton couple with six adopted children, all blind and some partially disabled, took seats in the second row of the committee room.

Joe Bartling, the adoptive father of the children, told the stories of their cruel abandonment by birth parents in their home countries to the state of their lives today. "We have a family of healthy, beautiful, productive, loving, children who love life and love each other."

Committee Chairman Sen. Stephen H. Martin, R-Chesterfield, who opposes abortion, asked Bartling to introduce each of his children and have them stand up.

Paula Stryker, a mother from Spotsylvania County, had a troubled pregnancy resulting in an infant who lived only 90 minutes.

"Even though these children may not live that long or may have very special needs, the support from our society should come in the form of how to best meet their needs," she said.

Senators also heard from Christie Brooks, a Stafford County mother of two children who reluctantly terminated a pregnancy in 2003 when she learned that the organs of her fetus shifted and the lungs had not developed.

She told senators that her worst fear as a child was the fear of suffocating. "But I was wrong. My biggest fear was having to watch my own child die from suffocating before my eyes while I stood by helpless."

The committee did vote, but Democrats added an amendment that calls for women who would be affected to receive Medicaid waivers to cover care for their babies.

The amendment sends the bill to the Senate Finance Committee, which will assess the fiscal impact of the bill. Cole's measure cleared the House of Delegates on Feb. 3 on a vote of 64-35.