‘A slap in the face’: Va. House GOP forced to reject own member’s anti-abortion bill - WTOP News
wtop.com
Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates forced their Republican colleagues to take an up-or-down vote Monday on a sweeping anti-abortion bill one lawmaker called “a slap in the face” to women who have been raped or suffer life-threatening complications from a pregnancy.

So for those not following VA politics, I’ll do up a bit of a TL;DR:

Pre-Nov-2023:

  • Governor: Republican
  • Legislature: 1 house was Dem, 1 house was Republican
  • Abortion was used to try to drum up support to make both legislative houses Republican in the Nov 2023 elections (among other things)

Nov 2023 elections happen.

  • Plan backfires. Dems get both legislative houses, but Gov seat is still Republican.

New Legislative session starts for 2024.

  • Republican filed a bill to remove funding for abortions
  • Dems were like “lol no”, wanted to bring a floor vote on the bill to get votes recorded on where everyone stands on it
  • Republicans tried to revoke and water down bill, Dems were like “lol no”
  • Dems forced the bill to floor vote
  • Almost every single Republican decided to vote “no” on bill, so it failed by 97 votes (out of 100).
  • Decoy321@lemmy.world
    17·
    5 months ago

    This is a disingenuous take, considering the important distinction between these state Dems and the national Dems:

    These guys have majorities in their houses, and thus have significantly more political power. The national Dems don’t.

    • cosmic_slate@dmv.socialOPEnglish
      67·
      5 months ago

      This is a disingenuous take

      No it isn’t. The national Dems are just incredibly ineffective and leadership pushes the bare minimum. Like the national party, Virginia has it’s share of Democrats that are conservative and take issue with broader party goals too.

      Let’s look at the legislature make-up:

      Virginia Senate: 21D-19R

      Virginia House of Delegates: 51D-49R

      There is very, very little room for defections.