By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 12, 2002; Page B01
RICHMOND, Feb. 11 -- Abortion foes advanced three measures in the House of Delegates today, signaling their intentions to capitalize on the General Assembly's historic Republican majority to further restrict the procedure.
The House passed a bill that would revive Virginia's ban on late-term abortions. Delegates also gave preliminary approval to a bill that would introduce the charge of "feticide" into state criminal law, imposing penalties on anyone who kills or harms a fetus during an assault on a pregnant woman. In addition, the chamber gave preliminary approval to a measure that would provide a "conscience clause" to protect doctors, pharmacists and other health-care practitioners if they were morally opposed to providing emergency contraception or the abortion pill formerly known as RU 486.
Del. Vivian E. Watts (D-Fairfax) and other abortion rights advocates in the legislature questioned whether a conscience clause is necessary.
Proponents of the clause, which would expand a state law allowing doctors to refuse to perform a surgical abortion, called the legislation a crucial safeguard against new drugs that they say have dramatically increased a woman's ability to terminate a pregnancy. Two delegates who are pharmacists told lawmakers that it is common for a pharmacy to refer customers elsewhere if it does not carry certain drugs. The bill's supporters said they want to make sure that anyone who refuses to dispense "morning after" or abortion pills is not punished by an employer.
"As the medicine continues to get more sophisticated, we also need to get more sophisticated in our ability for doctors and pharmacists to have the essential freedom not to prescribe these drugs," said Victoria Cobb, director of legislative affairs for the Richmond-based Family Foundation, an antiabortion group.
Before they can become law, the bills need approval in the Senate, which has generally been less receptive to legislation restricting abortion. A Senate committee rejected a proposal today to require a female younger than 18 to have a parent's consent before having an abortion, making passage of such a bill unlikely this year.
Lawmakers on the Senate courts committee, which will consider the measures that passed the House today, said they have not yet reviewed them closely. But some senators and Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) have said they would support a ban on late-term abortions -- what opponents call "partial birth" abortions -- as long as it is constitutional.
If House Bill 1154, approved by the House 75 to 25, is signed into law, Virginia would become the first state to reinstate a ban on late-term abortions since the Supreme Court struck down similar laws last year.
The high court invalidated bans adopted by Virginia and 30 other states when it ruled that a Nebraska statute failed to provide an exception to protect the health of the mother.
Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William), the sponsor of the bill to ban "medically induced infanticide," said he hopes courts will view abortion as killing a person rather than destroying a fetus. The bill's health exception is narrowly drawn to include only a threat to the woman's life or "risk of substantial or irreversible impairment of a major bodily function."
"It's saying, at this point in the delivery, if this much of the child is alive and partially delivered, the ban should be unconstitutional," said Cobb, who predicted a constitutional challenge.
Lawyers for the Washington-based Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, which challenged Virginia's 1998 law, said today that the bill's health exception is much too narrow.
"The Supreme Court said that one of the reasons you have to have a health exception is to allow the woman to have the second-term procedure when her doctor says it's appropriate," lawyer Janet Crepps said. "This language is too narrow to let the woman have an abortion in any circumstances her doctor said is appropriate."
Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore (R), said Kilgore believes the health exception, however narrow, is constitutional.
The overwhelming majority of abortions are performed in the first trimester of pregnancy by a method that today's bill does not address.
The feticide measure, sponsored by Del. Terry G. Kilgore (R-Scott), won passage in the House last year but was killed by a Senate committee. HB 149 was amended to classify feticide as a lower-level felony than a murder charge, as in the previous bill. The attacker would have to know the woman was pregnant when she was assaulted.
Also today, a bill to require public schools across Virginia to post the national motto, "In God We Trust," was sent to the Senate floor after the Education and Health Committee amended it to put the message in a more secular context.
The motto would be followed by the notation, "National motto enacted by Congress, 1956." The House approved a similar bill last month that excludes the notation.
The House also passed terrorism legislation that would criminalize acts of terror and impose harsher penalties on people arrested for crimes of terror. The bill would impose the death penalty on terrorists and their associates, disallow bail for terrorists, make possession and distribution of deadly microbes a felony and set new penalties for those convicted of hoaxes.
