/
Blocked by pro-abortion Senate, VA pro-lifers look ahead to '23

Blocked by pro-abortion Senate, VA pro-lifers look ahead to '23


Blocked by pro-abortion Senate, VA pro-lifers look ahead to '23

Pro-life activists in the purplish state of Virginia are watching in frustration as their abortion-supporting Senate will remain in power in the upcoming midterm elections but one activist says that allows more time to persuade voters that unborn children deserve life.

Olivia Turner of the Virginia Society for Human Life tells AFN a majority of the Virginia State Senate is “solidly pro-abortion,” and the next election cycle is not coming until 2023.

Lozier pushes back on no-real-heartbeat argument

A state justice is being accused of inserting his own personal opinion in a pending decision over South Carolina’s six-week heartbeat bill.

In a closely-watched hearing this week, Supreme Court Chief Justice Donald Beatty was presiding when he suggested the fetal heartbeat is, in reality, just an electrical signal because the heart has not developed.

That argument is a familiar one from abortion supporters, including pro-abortion physicians, especially in light of so-called heartbeat laws. 

Dr. Tara Lee of the Charlotte Lozier Institute tells AFN the justice is wrong: The fetus at six weeks has a beating heart.

“And not only the beating,” she says. “It's beating rhythmically at least 110 beats per minute.”

South Carolina’s six-week heartbeat bill is currently suspended pending a ruling by the state supreme court. A previous 20-week ban is currently in effect.

“So we have one more year of some hard fighting ahead of us,” she tells AFN.

Virginia voters elected a pro-life governor and lieutenant governor in 2021, rejecting the abortion stance of the Democratic Party, but the state’s Democrats have passed pro-abortion legislation for years that is still on the books and will remain there.

Turner, Olivia (VSHL) Turner

According to Turner, there are some pro-life laws on the books, too. Virginia law currently bans the gruesome partial-birth abortion procedure. There is also a parental consent law, which Turner calls “nominal” because it has not been enforced.

Asked what the pro-life community will do with elections a year away, Turner says that time gives Human Life and other pro-life groups more time to educate the public about the pro-abortion Senate that is not protecting the unborn.