Opponents said the bills were unprecedented intrusions into the prerogatives and decisions not just of pregnant women but of women trying to avoid conceiving.
“The General Assembly is dangerously close to making Virginia the first state in the country to grant personhood rights to fertilized eggs,’’ said Tarina Keene of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia.
Marshall’s bill for years had passed the conservative House only to bog down and die in a moderate Senate. This time, it stands to survive a Senate under new conservative control after last fall’s election stripped the Democrats of power. Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, a socially conservative Roman Catholic, has said he will sign the ultrasound bill, but has taken no position on Marshall’s personhood bill, said his spokesman J. Tucker Martin.
The ultrasound legislation would constitute an unprecedented government mandate to insert vaginal ultrasonic probes into women as part of a state-ordered effort to dissuade them from terminating pregnancies, legislative opponents noted.
“We’re talking about inside a woman’s body,’’ Del. Charnielle Herring, a Democrat, said in an emotional floor speech. “This is the first time, if we pass this bill, that we will be dictating a medical procedure to a physician.’’
The conservative Family Foundation hailed the ultrasound measure as an “update’’ to the state’s existing informed consent laws “with the most advanced medical technology available.’’
The debate over the ideologically divisive issue evoked some of the sharpest exchanges of the 2012 legislative session.
Del. Joseph Morrissey, the House Democrats’ sharp-tongued point man, was twice rebuked by House Speaker Bill Howell for calling the GOP majority hypocritical in advancing the abortion bills then contending the state has no business urging young girls to be vaccinated against a virus that can later cause cervical cancer.
