At Rally, Rep. Good Blasts Virginia Republicans for Negotiating on Abortion, Del. March Drafting Life-At Conception Legislation Amid Contentious 2023 Primary Battle
July 11, 2022 | Virginia
Congressman Bob Good (R-VA-05) held a rally on the Virginia Capitol grounds on Saturday afternoon to pressure Republican lawmakers to pursue a from-conception abortion ban, about two weeks after Governor Glenn Youngkin and leading pro-life lobbyist organization The Family Foundation said that they’d push for a 15-week pain threshold bill, due to the politically difficult environment in the General Assembly.
“The timeline of abortion should not be negotiated, abortion should not be negotiated, it should be eliminated,” Good said in his speech. “I’m sorry to say Republicans here in Richmond are the worst negotiators of all. You want to play poker with these folks. They show you what’s in their cards, they tell you the highest bid, and then they fold anyway.”
A small crowd braved the rain to attend the rally, organized by Good staffer Diana Shores and Chris Shores. Delegates Marie March (R-Floyd) and Dave LaRock (R-Loudoun) also spoke; Senator Amanda Chase (R-Chesterfield) and Delegate John McGuire (R-Goochland) were also present. However, there was a conspicuous absence of Republican General Assembly leadership or key lobbyist organizations like The Family Foundation and the Virginia Society for Human Life. Although the rally was held just across the capitol grounds from the governor’s mansion, Youngkin was scheduled to be in Nebraska where he was the keynote speaker at that state’s GOP convention.
Congressional Life at Conception Legislation
Good is a cosponsor to Congressman Alex Mooney’s (R-WV-02) Life at Conception Act, which would declare that “The terms ‘human person’ and ‘human being’ include each and every member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.”
That act would place unborn under the protection of the Constitution and specifically the 14th Amendment, but it is unlikely to advance in the current Democrat-controlled House. Good is leading Republicans in a long-shot effort to discharge that bill for a vote in the House.
“What a discharge petition means is if you have enough signatures from any members, if we get to 218, you can force a floor vote on it without having to depend on the Speaker. Now we don’t have 218 Republicans, we’ve got 210,” Good told The Virginia Star after the rally.
163 Republicans have cosponsored Mooney’s bill, and Good is hoping they’ll join the petition…. (Excerpt from The Virginia Star)
