Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 5, 1992 TAG: 9203050284
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WARREN FISKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
"I felt that unless God intervened with a thunderbolt, we were bound to lose in the Senate again," she said. "I really reached a level of not wanting to get involved in another charade. I asked myself: `Why are you doing this again?' "
She confided in Beth York, chief lobbyist for the Virginia Society for Human Life. York was more optimistic, noting that Republicans had almost doubled their strength in the Senate during last November's elections and would occupy 18 of the chamber's 40 seats.
"If the new members hear our arguments and we can just win one over to our side, then we've accomplished something," York said.
On Wednesday, York's hopes were exceeded when 17 Senate Republicans joined 10 Democrats to pass legislation that would require physicians to notify parents before performing abortions on girls younger than 16.
York and Kincaid were pleased, though not entirely satisfied; they had wanted the bill to cover all girls under 18.
The women stressed that their efforts will not stop until the General Assembly bans abortions in Virginia. They predict that the U.S. Supreme Court soon will overturn its 1973 decision establishing abortion as a constitutional right.
"When that happens, the real fight in the Virginia legislature will begin," Kincaid said. "Everything we've been doing up to now is just training for that day."
Kincaid and York - the state's foremost lobbyists against abortion rights - have been working together for almost 10 years. Praised by allies for their devotion to the cause and derided by opponents as fanatics, they have deep religious convictions and made sudden conversions to the movement in the early 1980s.
For Kincaid, the moment came in 1984, when she was 38 and pregnant with her third child. "A lot of friends told me that pregnant women in their late 30s ran a high risk of children with Down's Syndrome and they encouraged me to have an amniocentesis," she said. "I started reading everything about abortion and came to realize, my God, that an abortion is the taking of a human life."
Kincaid, 45, made the movement the focus of her life. She has advised political candidates, including television evangelist Pat Robertson in the 1988 presidential campaign and Marshall Coleman in the 1989 gubernatorial race.
A Baptist who dedicated herself to the Bible in the late 1970s, Kincaid was diagnosed with terminal cancer four years ago. She refused chemotherapy and radiation treatments, and is now recovered - she believes largely because of her prayers. The mother of three boys, she wears a small gold pin depicting the feet of a 10-week-old fetus. "I wear it everywhere but to bed," she said.
York, 55, is a Presbyterian; she and her husband own a religious bookstore in Richmond and have two grown children - "both strongly opposed to abortion," she quickly adds.
"Dare they be otherwise?" Kincaid says, laughing.
For most of her life, York had mixed emotions about abortion. "I thought it may be wrong but there might be mitigating circumstances to have one," she said.
That changed in 1980. Working as a lobbyist for the PTA, York became friendly with leading abortion-rights opponents. "The more educated I became, the more I became convinced that abortion is the watershed issue facing our country," she said. "If we do not value life, then our country has no values."
Two years later, she quit her PTA job to become the movement's chief Richmond lobbyist.
Since 1986, York and Kincaid have spearheaded efforts to convince legislators to pass parental notification legislation. They have testified, given out literature and recruited parents to recount the sad stories of medical problems their children experienced after secret abortions.
Although the House has passed notification bills repeatedly, the Senate Education and Health Committee has rejected them every year since 1986.
This year, the committee struck again. But York and Kincaid pursued a strategy that took advantage of the new GOP strength in the Senate. They sifted through 2,000 bills to select one to which they could attach the parental notification provisions. And they persuaded Sen. Mark Earley, R-Chesapeake, to be their patron.
The strategy allowed them to bypass the hostile Education and Health Committee. The bill that became their vehicle went through the Senate Courts of Justice Committee instead. And on the Senate floor Monday, Republicans and a few friendly Democrats provided votes to block parliamentary efforts to derail the legislation.
Kincaid said her faith in government has been restored.
"No longer will the will of the public be blocked by a single legislative committee," she said. "This is a victory for all people who believe in representative government."
by CNB