MORGANTOWN – After long debate, the House of Delegates approved the bill banning abortions after 15 weeks.
The House also approved bills to ban the sale of fetal body parts obtained from illegal abortions and to exempt a number of aboveground storage tanks used by the oil and gas industry from regular state inspections intended to protect drinking water supplies.
HB 4004 prohibits abortions after 15 weeks’ gestation. The bill makes exceptions for medical emergencies or severe fetal abnormalities. Licensed medical professionals who perform an abortion illegally under this bill would be subject to discipline by their oversight board. It provides a cause of action for a patient.
Delegates Lisa Zukoff, D-Marshall, and Barbara Evans Fleischauer, D-Monongalia, offered an amendment to exempt abortions in the instances of rape or incest.
Proponents of the amendment focused on the ongoing trauma that women and girls – particularly young teens and pre-teens – would suffer by being required to carry an unwanted baby resulting from an act of violence to term, and perhaps would suffer if the rapist pressed for parental rights in court.
Arguing against the amendment, Delegate Kayla Kessinger, R-Fayette, said the circumstances surrounding conception should not determine the value of the human life. And even those who support the amendment recognize it’s a child.
She has sponsored bills this session, she said, addressing the issue of violence against women, but this amendment doesn’t address that.
The amendment failed 21-78 and discussion proceeded to the bill.
Delegates on both sides told emotional personal stories to explain their positions.
Delegate David Kelly, R-Tyler, told the story of his unwed daughter who became pregnant in 1999 and was scared. A checkup revealed what the doctor called “abnormalities” and the doctor recommended an abortion.
But their daughter chose to carry the baby girl to term. Kelley pulled up a picture of the girl and said, “She’s beautiful.”
On the other side, Delegate Cody Thompson, D-Randolph, told of his grandmother who had seven children and was the matriarch of a big, loving family. During her eighth pregnancy, she discovered she had inter-uterine cancer. At the same time, his grandmother’s sister-in-law, who was pregnant with her second or third child, also learned she had inter-uterine cancer.
The sister-in-law chose to delay treatment until after she gave birth, Thompson said, and died. His grandmother chose to receive treatment, and so that eighth aunt or uncle was never born, but his grandmother lived and Thompson got to meet her and enjoy her company for many years.
This bill would have limited her choice, he said.
Various other arguments for both sides were raised. The final vote was vote 81-18 and it goes to the Senate. Three Democrats – there are 22 in the House and one was absent – voted with the majority but locally all delegates voted with their party.
Fetal parts bill
HB 4005 forbids the purchase, sale or transfer of fetal body parts from an induced abortion.
It lists exceptions for permissible sales and delegates adopted an amendment offered by Kayla Young, D-Kanawha, to include collection, processing, preservation, storage, quality control or transportation of fetal tissue permitted by federal law.
There was no debate and it passed 82-15. Again, all local delegates voted with their party.
Aboveground tank bill
HB 2598 is the bill to exempt certain oil and gas wastewater tanks from Department of Environmental Protection inspections in a zone of critical concern – within five hours upstream of a drinking water intake.
Delegate John Kelly, R-Wood, explained the bill, saying it will reduce costs for small operators who fear that they may have to plug marginal wells because of those costs.
Kelley said a similar bill passed the House last year but died in the Senate, and this one reflects negotiations among legislators, the Department of Environmental Protection and operators.
It provides for operators to inspect their own tanks annually instead of hiring a professional engineer for an inspection every three years. And it reduces inspections of secondary containment to once a month instead of every two weeks.
Several bill opponents cited the 2014 Freedom Industries spill into the Elk River that contaminated the water supply for 300,000 people and sparked the legislation being further altered in this bill.
“Lets do something for our constituents who need water to live,” said Delegate Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha.
Delegate Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia, said the 2014 legislation passed both houses unanimously. It admittedly overreached and was trimmed down in subsequent years.
But tanks inside zones of critical concern remain part of the legislation, he said, for a reason. They’re held to higher standards based on their proximity to public water supply sources.
Defending the bill, Delegate Trenton Barnhart, R-Pleasants, said he’s received many calls from small producers across the state addressing the need for this bill. “I cannot possibly express enough how important it is to our economy in the mid-Ohio valley.”
Energy chair Bill Anderson, R-Wood, said DEP testified that there were fewer than 10 leaks last year, and the bill strikes a balance between the need to protect the water and to protect the oil and gas industry.
The vote was 77-22. Locally, all Republicans and Democrat Dave Pethtel voted for it; all other Democrats voted against it.
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