Virginia Senate reaches a new low

Abortion rights’ advocates seem to think their opponents are winning the argument. In a speech on the 32nd anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, Sen. Hillary Clinton bent over backwards to mend fences with the pro-life side. At one point, she even admitted, “I, for one, respect those who believe with all their hearts and conscience that there are no circumstances under which any abortion should ever be available.”

Clinton is abandoning the strident pro-abortion rhetoric that has marked her career up to this point. Instead, the Oval Office-hungry senator shocked her audience last month by calling for dialogue with the pro-life side: “I think it’s important that family planning advocates reach out to those who may not agree with us on everything to try to find common ground.”

Hillary and Bill Clinton both say abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” If this is the goal -- and if we are indeed to search for common ground -- it certainly is reasonable to think that sparing the unborn child from pain would be part of that common ground. Even for those pro-abortion believers who do not accept the personhood of the fetus, it still is reasonable to think that the “safe” part of “safe, legal and rare,” would include government regulation of abortion clinics.

But Virginia disagrees. Nine of the 15 members of the Senate Education and Welfare Committee voted to permit late-term abortions without anesthesia, and they refused to bring abortion clinics up to the same health and safety standards of other medical clinics in Virginia.

House bill 1524 would have required those who perform abortions to obtain the woman’s written consent to the procedure before the abortion could take place. She must be told, among other things, “By 20 weeks gestation, the unborn child has the physical structures necessary to experience pain. There is evidence that by 20 weeks gestation unborn children seek to evade certain stimuli in a manner which in an infant or an adult would be interpreted to be a response to pain. Anesthesia is routinely administered to unborn children who are 20 weeks gestational age or older who undergo prenatal surgery.” Doctors who failed to give women this unbiased medical information would be subject to a $2,500 fine.

This is the provision that nine liberal Virginia Senators voted down. One of the nine is Roanoke Senator John Edwards. This bill sought only to provide information, in a way that is required for hundreds of other surgical procedures in Virginia.

For example, before cosmetic ear piercing, the patient has to be notified of the risks and possible discomfort of the act. Such requirements are not a ban on body piercing, and HB 1524 was not a ban on abortion.

The bill was, however, an inconvenience to anesthesiologists, which makes it worth noting that, according to public records, John Edwards received $750 from the Virginia Society of Anesthesiologists in 2003-2004.

House bill 2784 sought to make abortion clinics as safe as other “ambulatory surgery centers” in Virginia. Edwards and the same eight Senators voted, in effect, to make medical centers that cater to women less safe, less regulated and less accountable to the public than surgical centers that have clients of both sexes.

Again, there is no contradiction between regulating clinics and permitting the clinics’ specialty to be provided. When someone decides to get lasik surgery, or other voluntary eye surgery, he or she does so in the knowledge that everything in the surgery center, from the cleanliness of their instruments to the location of the medical waste facilities, conform to statutory codes intended to insure public health.

If a group of politicians suggested relaxing health and safety requirements for any other sort of medical facility, their constituents would be justifiably appalled and angry. But, for John Edwards and his colleagues, there is one group of Virginians whose health and safety are not important enough to warrant the close and effective regulation of medical facilities. That group is women seeking abortions.

Even supposing that pro-choice Senators are not terribly concerned about the health and safety of unborn children, they profess to be very concerned about the health and safety of women. Their votes belie this contention. Pregnant women do not benefit from relaxed regulations, any more than eye patients would benefit from de-regulating lasik surgery. Only the abortion providers benefit. It seems clear that their interests, in Edwards’ mind, trumps the interests of their patients.

John Edwards did not respond to an e-mail requesting comment.