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Kathy Tran (D) proposes legislation to allow abortions up until the moment of birth. Jan. 29, 2019.

VIRGINIA, January 30, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – A Virginia House Delegate has proposed legislation that would allow abortions up until the moment of birth.  

In a shocking exchange during a subcommittee hearing about the bill, the bill’s chief proponent hesitantly admitted that the measure would permit aborting children even as a mother has begun dilating in preparation to give birth.    

Delegate Kathy Tran, a Democrat from Northern Virginia, was asked, “How late in the third trimester could a physician perform an abortion?” 

Tran replied, “through the third trimester.  The third trimester goes all the way up to forty weeks…I don't think we have a limit in the bill.”

“Where it’s obvious a woman is about to give birth?” asked the chairman of the subcommittee, Delegate Todd Gilbert.  

Even when “she has physical signs that she is about to give birth?” asked Gilbert.  “She’s dilating?”  

“My bill would allow that, yes,” responded Tran.

“I certainly could’ve said a week from her due date and that would’ve been the same answer, correct?” asked Gilbert. 

“That is allowed in the bill,” answered Tran.  

Known as the Repeal Act, Virginia House Bill 2491 would eliminate current restrictions on late-term abortions.

According to the bill’s summary, the proposed law:

  • Eliminates the requirement that an abortion in the second trimester of pregnancy and prior to the third trimester be performed in a hospital.  
  • The bill eliminates all the procedures and processes, including the performance of an ultrasound, required to effect a woman's informed written consent to the performance of an abortion; however, the bill does not change the requirement that a woman's informed written consent be first obtained. 
  • The bill eliminates the requirement that two other physicians certify that a third trimester abortion is necessary to prevent the woman's death or impairment of her mental or physical health, as well as the need to find that any such impairment to the woman's health would be substantial and irremediable. 
  • The bill also removes language classifying facilities that perform five or more first-trimester abortions per month as hospitals for the purpose of complying with regulations establishing minimum standards for hospitals.

When Delegate Gilbert pressed both Tran and a spokesperson for NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia for an example of the mental health conditions which might necessitate the late-term abortion of a baby, neither were able to come up with a single example.    

The gruesome legislation proposed for the Old Dominion comes close on the heels of New York’s recently enacted abortion law which also removes protections for the unborn, permitting abortion up until birth.