Despite the fact that a similar bill failed in the GOP-dominated House of Representatives, a Virginia state lawmaker said he will propose a bill to ban sex-selection abortions in his state.
State Del. Bob Marshall (R) claimed that his measure is unrelated to the national ban that didn’t make it through Congress. “I don’t want us to become a haven for sex-selective abortion,” Marshall said. “It gets people to thinking that there’s a human being there that we’re not protecting.” But the problem is that Marshall is trying to push a bill to address a non-existent issue. Similar to the ban on sex-selection abortions that Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) tried to push, the Virginia bill would do only add additional, unnecessary barriers to abortion care.
And this new law would be on top of the restrictive abortion measures that Virginia already has in place, like the new law requiring women to have an ultrasound before they have an abortion. And just today, Virginia health commissioner Dr. Karen Remley resigned from her position on the state’s Board of Health today, citing Virginia’s restrictive regulations for abortion clinics as her primary reason for stepping down.