Several members of the state Senate, as well as the House, said they could not support a bill that did not include an exemption for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. A state Senate committee voted 7-3 Tuesday morning to eliminate an exemption added by the state House last week for cases of rape or incest up to 12 weeks after arrest, with mandatory reporting to law enforcement. The committee vote to amend the bill included only Republican men, as Democrats on the committee abstained in an apparent strategic move to reduce the bill’s chances of passing the full Senate. “This is a bad bill,” said Democratic state Sen. Marlon Gibson, explaining why he abstained from the vote. “You can’t put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig. Exceptions don’t make abortion restrictions any less harmful. We, as lawmakers, shouldn’t be able to decide who gets an abortion and who doesn’t.” During the committee meeting, Republican Sen. Tom Davis offered nearly a dozen amendments that were not approved by the committee, including a proposed amendment that would add an exception for fatal fetal abnormalities. HB 5399, as currently written, would ban abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with only limited exceptions to prevent the death of the pregnant woman, substantial risk of death to the pregnant woman due to a physical condition, or “substantial physical disability a important physical function of the pregnant woman”. The bill lists several medical conditions it considers to pose such a risk to the pregnant woman, including molecular pregnancy, ectopic pregnancy, severe preeclampsia and miscarriage. The House had amended the near-total abortion ban a week earlier to add an exception for cases of rape and incest up to 12 weeks after conception, with reporting requirements. That amendment — a major point of contention among Republicans — was approved by voice vote in a rushed re-examination of the original bill, which had just been rejected by the House earlier in the evening due to a lack of exemptions. That amendment was subsequently removed from the Senate committee on Tuesday.
