THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 10, 1997 TAG: 9702100086
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY O'DELL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: 46 lines
Abortion rights advocates will get another chance to kill legislation they oppose as committees work to clear their dockets in the next-to-last week of the 1997 General Assembly.
Among the controversial bills set for committee action this week are one to ban so-called ``partial-birth'' abortions and another to require a parent to be notified when an unwed minor seeks an abortion.
Those measures are likely to be considered by the Senate Education and Health Committee on Thursday. The committee killed the Senate version of the partial-birth abortion ban earlier this year and has rejected parental notification proposals several times in the past.
Even if the committee kills the parental notification bill, another version that made it through a different Senate panel is alive in the House of Delegates.
The key issue with the Senate version of parental notification is whether delegates will amend it, as they did the House bill, to allow a grandparent or adult sibling to be notified in lieu of a parent. Republican Gov. George F. Allen said he would veto the bill in that form.
``I've said I wanted a true parental notification bill, and that's what I'm going to fight for,'' Allen said.
Abortion-rights lobbyist Karen Raschke is worried that some Republicans who voted for the amendment might be persuaded to change their minds, giving Allen the bill he wants.
There is one significant difference between the partial-birth abortion bill that passed the House and the one killed by the Senate health committee. The House bill applies only to a viable fetus - one able to survive outside the womb. That provision is necessary to make the bill constitutional, a lawyer for a national abortion-rights group said.
Also this week, a committee of eight senior lawmakers - four from each chamber, five Democrats and three Republicans - will begin hashing out a compromise on revisions to the two-year, $35 billion budget. The conferees will be appointed Tuesday.
The Senate and the House of Delegates approved competing spending plans last week. Among the differences to be worked out are the size of raises for state employees, teachers and college faculty.
KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY