Virginia Lawmaker Introduces ‘Pain-Capable’ Abortion Ban

Delegate Nick Freitas (R-Culpeper) has introduced a bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks in most circumstances, a threshold based on when the unborn are believed to feel pain.

“We’re actually making sure that it’s understood that this is about the capability to feel pain, it’s not about an arbitrary 20-week schedule,” Freitas told The Virginia Star.

He said, “This is really a question about preserving innocent human life. And obviously there’s a lot of disagreement about abortion, but the thing that I’m hoping for is that we could all agree on some sort of fundamental level that when a child in a womb can actually feel itself being aborted, that there’s something inherently wrong with allowing that to continue, especially when at this point what we’re seeing is that you can go four to five months being pregnant, and that’s the point where now science has said there’s a high degree of probability that the child feels pain.”

“We’re simply saying that, look, nothing prevents you from getting an abortion for those first four to five months, but at some point, when do we as a society come in and say look, the clump of cells argument is ridiculous. The clump of cells argument is absurd. This is obviously a human child, we know it can feel pain at this point, and so at the very least we should be able to agree that this is the point where we as a society think it’s no longer appropriate,” Freitas said.

Freitas’ HB 1274, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, is similar to laws in other states, according to Virginia Society for Human Life President Olivia Gans Turner….(Excerpts from Virginia Star)