Another GOP Stealth Amendment Caught in the War on Women
The excuses they are passing about now that they got caught are absolutely lame.
A bill that abortion-rights advocates worried would repeal significant protections for women seeking abortions has been redrafted to address those concerns, a Republican supporter of the bill announced Monday. The new bill, which deals with minors seeking abortions, will get a public hearing in Olympia next week.
Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver, introduced the bill requiring parents be notified if their daughters, 17 or younger, plan to get an abortion. Although the bill’s title made no mention of it, one section of that bill would have repealed parts of Initiative 120, which voters approved in 1991.
That initiative set in stone a woman’s right to privacy when obtaining an abortion, and it declared that physicians have the right to perform abortions and that women have the right to get one, as long as the fetus could not survive outside the womb. The section of the bill that would have repealed parts of I-120 was erroneously added by the state’s nonpartisan bill drafters, Code Reviser Kyle Thiessen told Republicans in an email.
The new draft of Senate Bill 5156 omits the section in question.
The original bill also violated government transparency rules, said Sen. Mike Padden, R-Spokane Valley and chair of the Senate Law and Justice Committee.
“Our state’s constitution says in so many words that the title and text of a bill need to line up,” Padden said in a statement released Monday. “This bill’s title is clearly about notifying parents or guardians; however, an error made in the bill-drafting stage had the effect of the original text going beyond the title.”