After a heated floor debate, the House of Delegates on Monday killed a proposal that would have cut off public funding for abortions in Virginia with no exceptions for cases of rape, incest, to save the life of the mother or others covered under federal law.
Before the vote, Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, in a rare move, denied a request by the bill’s patron, Del. Tim Griffin, R-Bedford County, to have his legislation stricken from the docket after Democrats rejected a move by Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah County and the House minority leader, to amend the measure to include some exceptions.
The final vote was 95-1, with two abstensions and two absences. The lone yes vote came from Del. Tommy Wright, R-Lunenburg County. Abstaining were Dels. Chris Runion, R-Rockingham County and Mark Earley Jr., R-Henrico County.
House Democrats hailed the vote as a victory for the protection of reproductive health care and women’s health care overall in Virginia.
“Democrats stopped a bill that would have endangered women’s lives and decimated health care services for the most vulnerable among us,” the House Democratic Caucus said in a statement Monday evening.
Griffin had found himself at the center of a political maneuver last week when a Democratic-led House committee rejected a measure that would have banned all abortions in Virginia outright, but on the next day, against all expectations, advanced his HB 404 to the House floor to force Republicans to go on the record on one of the most divisive political issues facing the country in a presidential election year.
“This bill codifies language that says taxpayers’ money must not be used towards abortions,” Griffin said on the House floor Monday. “We came into the committee hearing ready to present the bill with the intent that I had for it, and we were denied that opportunity to add amendments and to even have a life of the mother exemption, which is what I wanted clearly laid out in this bill.”
Griffin never spoke to his bill during the committee meeting, and at the request of Del. Marcus Simon, D-Fairfax County, the panel rejected a motion by Gilbert to amend the measure to include the exceptions for rape, incest or if the life of the mother was in danger, as defined under the federal Hyde Amendment. That provision was enacted in 1976 and effectively prevents federal funding from being used to pay for abortions through any programs that are administered by the Department of Health and Human Services.
“We can deal with this on the floor. I think the idea is to just get this up and put the amendment on the floor as well,” Simon said at the time.
But when Gilbert on Monday renewed his request for a substitute, Simon motioned for the House to reject it because he said he saw no indication that Griffin’s bill, as filed, ever intended to include exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother, among others.
“Having read the bill, it was in fact intended to repeal those sections that provided for exceptions, and was in fact intended to defund agencies like Planned Parenthood and other agencies that provide abortion services,” Simon said.
In a testy exchange, Gilbert fired back and reminded Simon that he had been promised “plenty of time to talk about this on the floor,” and that his substitute before the House on Monday contemplated all the exceptions covered under the Hyde Amendment.
“There was plenty of time to talk about all the concern the other side has on this issue to try to find some common ground, but that opportunity was not afforded to us in committee because this guy sent it straight to the floor as what is very clearly a political maneuver, as it has been reported in so many news outlets,” Gilbert said.
While Gilbert said he wasn’t “besmirching” the patron’s ability to write legislation, he said Griffin’s proposal was “drafted by a freshman who has never done this before” and who trusted the attorneys at the Department of Legislative Services.
“I don’t know precisely what he asked for,” Gilbert said. “The opportunity to discern and to ascertain what the delegate’s intention was certainly presented itself in committee. But we did not get that opportunity to flesh out what exactly his intention was and what it was not.”
But Simon motioned for the House to rule Gilbert’s substitute as not relevant to Griffin’s bill. “I don’t believe that a floor substitute that does have the effect of doing the exact opposite of the introduced bill would be germane to the underlying bill,” he said, and the House approved Simon’s motion on a 51-48 party-line vote.
When Griffin said that his proposal sought to codify the “Hyde Amendment language in Virginia law,” he was cut off by both Simon and Scott, who reminded him that Gilbert’s substitute, which would have added the exceptions to his legislation, had been rejected.
“The delegate has to speak to the bill, not the bill that you wish you had introduced,” Scott reprimanded Griffin, who then complained that Scott allowed other delegates to define his bill.
“It’s unfortunately become a circus,” Griffin said. “The fact that I am denied the ability to do what I want with my own bill, the fact that it’s been derailed into something that is not the bill that I put forward is disappointing. I’ve been clear about what my language is, and the speaker has made his ruling, but I will not allow these babies and these mothers to be politicized.”
“If this is how it’s going to go today, I move to strike this bill,” he said.
Urging the House to deny Griffin’s motion, Simon then lectured his colleague from Bedford County. “We don’t introduce bills and hope that the folks at the DLS [Department of Legislative Services] get it right,” Simon said.
“We read our bills, we know what they do and what they mean. And we’re responsible for what happens next. This delegate isn’t the first person to stand on this floor having to defend a bill that was put in improperly and denied the ability to do what he wants with his bill. We need to vote on what this bill says and what it was put in to do.”
The House then voted 51-48 to deny Griffin’s motion to strike his bill after ignoring advice from Del. Rob Orrock, R-Spotsylvania County, who warned Democrats that they were breaking with a House of Delegates tradition.
“This is my 35th session, and during my tenure I can recall only one time when a member was not allowed the courtesy of striking their own bill,” Orrock said. “We have a longstanding practice that when it is your legislation and it has totally gone awry, that courtesy is afforded. Understand the consequences that it may come home to roost with all the rest of us at some future juncture.”
Del. Candi Mundon King, D-Prince William County, steered the debate from political strategizing back to the topic of Griffin’s bill, passionately urging her colleagues to reject what she called an “absolutely cruel and inhumane” proposal.
“This piece of legislation would cut off tens of thousands of Virginians’ access from essential care. It’s a scorched-earth bill that does not prioritize the well-being of women,” King said. “When the patron introduced this bill, he knew exactly what he was doing, targeting vulnerable survivors of rape and women who could lose their lives if they have a life-threatening pregnancy. That’s what repealing that code means.”
The political gamesmanship around the legislation was an attempt at hiding behind “just how cruel this bill actually is,” King said. “The people of the commonwealth deserve to know where delegates stand on whether they live or die during childbirth.”
Griffin’s bill would endanger women’s lives, conflict with federal law and decimate health care services in communities that need them the most, including Griffin’s, King added. “In November, when women spoke, they decided that they did not want a party that could not send more than a handful of women to Richmond deciding whether they live or die during childbirth. The people have spoken, and I think my colleagues should listen.”
Before the House voted, Gilbert responded to King’s plea by stating that Democrats had denied Republicans the chance to amend the legislation to include the exceptions covered under the Hyde Amendment.
“You’re not going to let us fix it, and then you are going to accuse us of everything that we just got accused of, and then deny us the ability to do the very thing you say that we don’t want to do,” Gilbert said. “I don’t know where the absurdity of that theater ends if we get stuck with that rhetoric after what we just tried to do just got shut down in such grand fashion.”
