Sharp debate accompanies ultrasound bills passage

By: Ray Reed | The News & Advance
Published: February 14, 2012

The ultrasound requirement for abortions in Virginia cleared its last major legislative step Tuesday, but not before House of Delegates members traded jabs debating its impact.

Del. Charnielle Herring, D-Fairfax, said the bill marks the first time legislators have demanded doctors use a particular medical procedure.

“This is the ultimate government invasion, an invasion into a woman’s body” using an ultrasound scope internally, in many cases, to determine gestational age, Herring said.

The bill, sponsored by Del. Kathy Byron, R-Campbell County, would require women undergoing an abortion have the ultrasound procedure. Doctors would have to offer the woman a chance to view the ultrasound image and listen to the fetal heartbeat, and get a signed refusal if the woman says no.

“One thing we need to remember,” Byron said, “is that we are not forcing any woman to have an abortion. She has made that decision, or is about to make it, and it affects not only her but her unborn child.”

The House gave the bill final approval on a party-line vote, 63-36.

Byron’s HB 462 is identical to an ultrasound bill that already has passed the Senate.

Gov. Bob McDonnell has said he would sign the legislation.

Two Republican delegates said Democrats were wrong when they asserted the bill would lead doctors to offer a view of the dead fetus to a woman being treated after a miscarriage.

Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, said “no future changes we are suggesting here will apply to miscarriages.”

Del. David Albo, R-Fairfax, said Byron’s bill would add the ultrasound requirement to the state’s existing informed-consent law for abortions.

“There has never been one time that we’ve heard of any doctor applying the informed-consent bill to a miscarriage,” he said.

Gilbert said legislators sometimes lose sight of what’s at stake in the abortion debate.

“People on the other side never talk about invasiveness to the unborn,” Gilbert said, adding “the vast majority of these cases are matters of lifestyle convenience.

“We think in matters of lifestyle convenience and in other matters that it is right and proper for a woman to be fully informed about what she is doing.”

Sharp debate accompanies ultrasound bills passage

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