Virginia Mandatory Ultrasound Law's Repeal Blocked By State GOP 17JAN13

SO many of the repiglicans and tea-baggers are so hypocritical about the sanctity of life it makes me sick. They pass laws restricting abortion and birth control and then pass laws cutting and denying funding of vital child and family social safety net programs. The speak of women in the most ignorant terms, so ignorant in fact I am amazed some of them were able to father children. I have come to believe that most of them probably hate their mothers and woman in general and long for the days when women were little better off than slaves, when men were able able to tell women what to do, when and where, and didn't have to worry about the legal and political consequences or their comments or decisions. The war on women continues in Virginia, men continue to degrade them by passing restrictions and limitations on what should be among the most difficult and personal decisions a woman would have to make. But I also believe that some of these men's mothers, seeing and hearing their son's attitude on women, secretly wish they had had a choice.......This from HuffPost......
 A Republican-controlled committee in the Virginia State Senate voted 8-7 on Thursday to block Democrats' efforts to repeal a new mandatory ultrasound law and a set of regulations that could shut down many abortion clinics in the state. The committee also voted down a new anti-abortion bill that would have prevented Medicaid from paying for low-income women's abortions in cases where there is a severe fetal anomaly.

Virginia Republicans attracted national criticism in early 2012 when they proposed a bill requiring women to undergo invasive, medically unnecessary transvaginal ultrasound procedures before having an abortion. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) laterhelped Republicans revise the bill to require only external, "jelly-on-the-belly" procedures, and he signed that version into law.

State Sen. Ralph Northam (D), the only physician in the senate, proposed a bill that would repeal the mandatory ultrasound law because he says it violates the privacy and sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship. "I am giving you the opportunity to right the wrong committed last year," he told committee members on Thursday.

The Medical Society of Virginia and the Virginia American College of Obstetricians testified in favor of repealing the ultrasound bill, echoing Northam's concerns.

Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia and a top anti-abortion lobbyist, also testified at the hearing. She accused abortion providers of "hiding the picture" of the ultrasound from women in order to prevent them from changing their minds and to increase profits, according to The American Independent's Reilly Moore.

The Senate Health and Education Committee voted along party lines to block the repeal of the ultrasound law, as well as the repeal of a set of abortion clinic regulations, known as Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, or TRAP. The law requires that first-trimester abortion clinics meet the same building standards as newly constructed hospitals.

State Sen. Mark Herring (D), the sponsor of the bill to repeal the TRAP law, said he is going to continue fighting to keep the clinics open. "What [the committee] did was wrong," he told The Huffington Post. "I think the votes today indicate that Republicans still have an extreme agenda, and they're intent on reducing access to women's health care."

The committee also voted down an anti-abortion bill on Thursday. One Republican on the committee, State Sen. Harry Blevins (R), crossed over and voted with Democrats to kill a bill that would have banned state-subsidized abortions for women with severely impaired fetuses.

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