Delegates are advancing a bill imposing criminal penalties on abortion providers while specifying that mothers would be exempt from charges.
The policy being considered by lawmakers does not account for any period at the beginning of a pregnancy to choose an abortion. The bill allows abortion for some medical circumstances.
The bill does not include exceptions for rape or incest, and a majority of members on the House’s health committee voted down an amendment to add them.
Those are all key policy points when, in somewhat of a surprise, lawmakers took their first steps toward consideration of West Virginia abortion policy after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned landmark Roe vs. Wade guarantees.
The House Health Committee advanced a bill on a 16-6 vote. The House Judiciary Committee is set to consider the bill at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday. And a public hearing has been scheduled for 9 a.m. Wednesday.
So, many steps are still ahead, even before sending the bill to the Senate.
Gov. Jim Justice added abortion policy to his special session call that originally was supposed to focus only on a proposed income tax cut. The special session was supposed to start at noon, and he announced the big addition at 12:14 p.m.
“From the moment the Supreme Court announced their decision in Dobbs, I said that I would not hesitate to call a Special Session once I heard from our Legislative leaders that they had done their due diligence and were ready to act,” stated Justice, a Republican. “As I have said many times, I very proudly stand for life and I believe that every human life is a miracle worth protecting.”
The House Health Committee considered the bill for about two hours Monday afternoon. Committee members received the bill about five minutes before convening, but took a break of a little more than 15 minutes before starting discussions.
As a majority of committee members voted down an amendment that would have added exceptions for rape or incest, they also voted down an amendment to remove the criminal penalties from the bill.
Most of the comments during the committee meeting came from members of the Democratic minority, who expressed outrage and alarm.
Delegate Lisa Zukoff, D-Marshall, was critical of the vote against rape and incest exceptions.
“These women are forced to have sex and be impregnated, and are going to be forced to give birth. What are we turning into?” Zukoff said.
“We talk about, we want West Virginia to be a place where people can live, work and raise a family. So I guess we’re allowed to live, work, raise a family and force your daughter or your wife to give birth if she was raped. I don’t think that’s the message we want to send out folks. I’ll be voting no.”
Delegate Barbara Fleischauer, D-Monongalia, expressed support for the amendment to lift criminal penalties on abortion providers, calling that kind of incarceration “extreme.”
“And I think this idea that we are going to force women to bear a child against their will and put doctors and nurses in jail for 10 years is something out of the Middle Ages,” she said.
The bill allows exceptions for a nonmedically viable fetus, an ectopic pregnancy, which is when a fertilized egg implants and grows outside the main cavity of the uterus, or a medical emergency, which is defined as a condition that requires an immediate abortion to avert the patient’s death or to avoid serious risk of damage to a major bodily function.
A medical emergency does not, in the bill, include psychological or emotional conditions.
The bill specifies several things that are not considered an abortion: a miscarriage, a stillbirth, use of established cell lines derived from aborted human embryos, treatment by a licensed medical provider that accidentally terminates or severely injures the fetus and in vitro fertilization.
The bill also specifies that it does not prevent the use of contraceptives.
Delegate George Miller, R-Morgan, spoke in favor of the bill during the Health Committee meeting. He described the recent birth of his great granddaughter. And he described the risk of having family relationships strained over the abortion issue.
“I vote because life means that much to me,” Miller said.
Delegate Joe Ellington, a Republican who is also an obstetrician-gynecologist in the Mercer County area, spoke before the Health Committee.
Under questioning by committee members, Ellington discussed when life begins.
“I could give you my personal view, but I think most people look at conception,” Ellington said. “If you’re talking about a new fetus, a new human life, I would say conception. If you want to go beyond that, I would say it starts before even conception.”