Immediately following a Senate committee’s advancement of two abortion-related bills, about 300 people gathered along 9th Street at the state Capitol to decry the measures and rally for women’s rights.
At first, the group, mostly women, gathered on the western side of the street, facing off with a handful of anti-abortion protesters opposite them.
While the hundreds of protesters chanted “Our bodies, our lives” and held a variety of signs, some reading “Stop the War on Virginia Women,” the pro-lifers shouted back, holding posters of fetuses.
Eventually, women’s rights rally moved across the street and protesters stood shoulder-to-shoulder along the sidewalk leading from the General Assembly building to the Capitol, cheering Democratic legislators as they made their way to caucus meetings.
Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William, sponsor of House Bill 1, the contentious “personhood” measure that would define life as beginning at conception, decided to bypass the gauntlet after being jeered when his bill cleared committee earlier in the morning.
“Even Christ avoided stonings,” he said.
Marshall’s bill advanced to the Senate floor on an 8-7 vote after being amended to specify that that the bill would not prohibit the use of contraception.
“I’m pleased. This is a very simple proposition,” he said of the bill’s advancement, adding that the amendment was fine with him. “If it helps people understand it better, OK.”
Katherine Greenier, director of the Women’s Rights Project with the ACLU of Virginia and one of the rally’s organizers, said she was disturbed by the measure moving forward despite weeks of public denouncement.
“This bill would lay the legal foundation to ban abortion and contraception in the event of a Supreme Court reversal [of Roe v. Wade],” she said, adding that there were “numerous other concerns” with the legislation.
Marshall called claims that the bill would prevent women from undergoing in vitro fertilization “completely disingenuine.”
Another bill, House Bill 462, sponsored by Del. Kathy J. Byron, R-Campbell, was amended in the committee to weaken the measure, which originally proposed requiring ultrasounds, including vaginal, for all women about to undergo an abortion.
Under pressure from Gov. Bob McDonnell and the public, the bill was altered in committee to only require abdominal ultrasounds and offer vaginal probes early in a pregnancy.
“The amendment is nonsensical,” Greenier said. “We’re now mandating that a doctor perform a test on a woman, whether she consents or not, that is medically unnecessary. I can’t think of a bigger intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship.”
The staunchly pro-life Marshall said he was disappointed that the ultrasound bill had been altered.
“I think it was a reaction to this screaming out here,” he said, adding, “The women were already undergoing the transvaginal ultrasounds. This is nothing new.”
Asked if he felt like his Republican colleagues were succumbing to public pressure, Marshall said he could only answer for himself.
“I don’t back down from this one,” he said. “There’s no reason to.”
Senate Democratic Leader Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax, emerged from the gauntlet to cheers and applause. Asked if the amendments to the two bills made them more palatable to Democrats, he responded: “Hell, no.”
He added: “Republicans are really screwing this place up.”
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Senators and most others in attendance were aware of the national attention on the measure and late-night comedy ridicule of the "personhood" bill and other abortion-related measures.
"We are a laughingstock of the world because of things like this," said Sen. Mamie E. Locke, D-Hampton, who opposed the bill. "The individual rights of women are being challenged continuously," she said, calling the issue of a woman's pregnancy a matter between "them, their family and their doctor and their God."
A number of speakers -- including a physician and a mother who has gone through multiple in vitro fertilization procedures -- were concerned that the proposed legislation was not precise enough to safeguard the procedure and provide for all the ramifications of how fertilized eggs would be handled.
Still others wondered whether forms of birth control that prevent fertilization of an egg, or implantation of a fertilized egg in a uterus could become criminal acts.
Proponents of the measure, however seemed ready for this concern. Sen. Stephen D. Newman, R-Lynchburg, proposed an amendment that specified that nothing in the law could be interpreted as "opposing the use of lawful contraception."
The amendment passed on a party-line vote, and a few minutes later, the committee voted to report the bill.
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