MORGANTOWN – Three Monongalia County Democratic legislators are introducing bills to repeal various abortion restrictions enacted in recent years. They announced their bills at a Monday press conference at the Capitol.
Delegate Evan Hansen is lead sponsor of HB 4382, joined by Delegate Danielle Walker. Sen. Bob Beach is filing a twin version that will be introduced and given a number.
“We believe every person deserves access to high quality and affordable reproductive health care, including abortion care,” Hansen said. Care that is provided in the patient’s community, with dignity and respect, he added.
The prior legislation the bill targets, he said, was designed by politicians to chip away at reproductive freedom and push it out of reach.
HB 4382 would repeal the Women’ Right to Know Act, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act and the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. It ends the ban on medication abortions performed via telehealth and removes the criminal penalties for performing an abortion.
Walker, a mother of two sons (one son, Dimitri, died last summer from leukemia), has before told the story of an unexpected pregnancy that she chose to not go through with in order to be a mother to her ill toddler.
She said again on Monday, “I have been an abortion patient.” The restrictions they wish to repeal are a barrier to safe, affordable and accessible health care.
“It is racist,” she said of the restrictions. “It affects people of color tremendously,” along with low-income and rural residents. “It upsets me to my core. … Aboriton rights are human rights.”
As a mother, she said, “It is not my place to come between a patient and a medical provider.”
Beach agreed that “reproductive health care should be available to all women.” He displayed a copy of
his bill, which he planned to file right after the press conference.
HB 4382 was referred to the Health and Human Resources Committee, which on Jan. 14 overwhelmingly approved HB 4004, imposing a ban on abortions after 15 weeks’ gestation. The Dominion Post asked for his thoughts on the bill seeing an agenda, given that even before the GOP became the majority, the Democratic House passed pro-life bills.
Hansen said that many of the restrictions the bill aims to repeal were enacted after the GOP took over, and few of the Democratic leaders from the prior era are still in the House,
HB 4004 is sitting in the Judiciary Committee and has not been placed on an agenda to date.
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