In offering comments about TRAP, I'm struck by the sense that those pressing this legislation know, and probably believe, most every argument that one would pose against it...yet they press on.  So, as one representative of the majority of Virginians who understand that abortion decisions should be left to women and families, I feel I must speak out.

So much hypocrisy is evidenced in claiming TRAP will benefit women's health, when it instead seeks to return us to a dangerous time when women without access to abortion as an option took matters into their own hands, or risked dangers of pregnancy to themselves for lack of an option.

Perhaps this feels like a moral and religious issue for some proponents, but as a religious person myself, I see this legislation as opposed to my own moral sense of how to show compassion to women, to families, and especially to the disadvantaged in our state.  There are evil possibilities on either side of every abortion--that's why the mother and her doctor should occupy the central place in decision-making...not politicians or the state.

For decades we have had a Supreme Court-confirmed right to abortion in this country.  We remain a country where the majority understand and value this right to provacy.  It's undemocratic in so many ways for the State of Virginia to infringe on this right...and it's unthinkably cruel to do this in an unfeeling way that targets women who lack the resources to find other ways to obtain an abortion when that's what they've decided is most needed for themselves and their families.