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Virginia Legislature Drops Anti-Choice Amendments From Budget Proposal

Virginia budget negotiators on Monday agreed to a plan that leaves out two anti-choice amendments previously proposed by house lawmakers.

Virginia budget negotiators on Monday agreed to a plan that leaves out two anti-choice amendments previously proposed by house lawmakers. Shutterstock

Virginia budget negotiators on Monday agreed to a plan that leaves out two anti-choice amendments previously proposed by house lawmakers.

The Virginia General Assembly passed a two-year state budget last year, but lawmakers have spent the first part of 2015 negotiating adjustments to that plan. Republicans in both the house and senate used the process as an opportunity to increase abortion restrictions, tacking on several anti-choice amendments to early versions of the plan.

One such amendment would bar the use of state funds for people who seek abortion after an incapacitating physical or mental anomaly has been identified in the fetus. Though the federal Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion, many states use state money to fund the procedure in some or all cases.

In Virginia, public money can be used for an abortion only in cases of life endangerment, rape, incest, or when a fetal abnormality has been detected.

The amendment would have largely affected low-income women on Medicaid, who would use state funds to pay for health-care services like abortion.

“These are Virginia women that have just received a tragic fetal diagnosis after what is often a much-wanted pregnancy,” Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, said in a statement. “But instead of supporting women and families in these difficult situations, these Delegates are callously telling women and families ‘tough luck’—and making safe, legal abortion for low-income families virtually impossible to access.”

Anti-choice advocates also pushed for a similar amendment during last year’s budget negotiations.

The second amendment added was an attempt to prohibit the state legislature from rewriting a Virginia TRAP (targeted regulation of abortion providers) law, which subjects outpatient abortion facilities to the same architectural standards as hospitals. The Virginia Board of Health voted in December to amend those restrictions, setting into action a regulatory process that could take up to two years.

The amendment would have sought to halt that process by prohibiting the use of state funds “to implement any changes in regulations for abortion clinics.”

Both amendments were initially approved in house votes, and made their way to the closed-door negotiations that took place between a team of senate and house lawmakers over the weekend.

That group, which announced the result of their negotiations late Monday evening, removed both anti-choice amendments from the bill.

The final version of the budget proposal, which includes raises for state employees and teachers, funding for free clinics and community health centers, and increased health-care benefits for low-income people with mental illnesses, could come before the two chambers for a vote this week.

If it passes a vote in the legislature, it will move to Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s desk.

The budget proposal also rejects the Medicaid expansion sought by McAuliffe, a Democrat. McAuliffe had made the expansion of the public health insurance program a signature goal of his first year in office. But with both the Virginia house and senate controlled by Republicans, neither chamber included funds for expansion in their proposals.