Did Bob Marshall cry himself to sleep last night?

Washington Post:

In a highly unusual move, the full Virginia Senate killed the so-called ‘personhood’ bill for the year just hours after it seemed likely to surv ive.

The Senate voted 24-14 to send the bill back to Senate Education and Health Committee, with two anti-abortion Democrats abstaining.

Sen. Richard Saslaw (D-Fairfax) made the motion. Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment (R-James City) agreed, saying the bill needed more time to be examined.

The bill would have provided that “unborn children at every stage of development enjoy all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of the commonwealth, subject only to the laws and constitutions of Virginia and the United States, precedents of the United States Supreme Court, and provisions to the contrary in the statutes of the commonwealth.”

The action came not long after a Senate committee voted along party lines to approve the bill, despite the opposition of those who argued that the broad measure could prohibit birth control and in vitro fertilization.

Couple this lastest development with the trans-vaginal ultrasound bill being pulled, and the best laid plans of mice and men went down in a blaze of ….nothingness. The women of Virginia decided they were having none of this nonsense. Many also credit the comediennes and liberal commentators for the defeat. Rachel Maddow was informative. She presented the time line and explained the dangers of the bills. Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Amy Pohler and Seth Myer mocked, mimicked and ridiculed Virginia lawmakers. Morning Joe discussed both bills and pointed out the damage both could do to McDonnell’s chances for Vice President.

Governor McDonnell was in a lose/lose situation. Had he had to sign those bills, the women of Virginia as well as the women of America would have skewered him .   As it is now, the strident anti-abortion crew is looking at him with a jaundiced eye.  According to the New York Times:

Republican lawmakers in Virginia changed course on another piece of conservative legislation on Thursday, with the State Senate voting to suspend consideration of a bill that would define life as beginning at conception.

It was an abrupt reversal for Republicans, and came hours after a Senate committee voted to approve the legislation for consideration by the full body. There was broad speculation that Gov. Bob McDonnell was behind the move.

“This is a major disgrace for the Republican leadership,” said Don Blake, who runs the Virginia Christian Alliance, a conservative group that backed the bill. Republicans should have had the votes to pass the bill, he said, and the fact that they opted to suspend it raised suspicions of the governor’s involvement.

“Pro-life groups are concerned that the governor had a hand in this,” Mr. Blake said. A spokesman for Mr. McDonnell, a Republican who is mentioned as a possible candidate for vice president, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The rapid-fire procedural maneuvering came one day after Mr. McDonnell ordered Republicans in the House of Delegates to soften a bill requiring a vaginal ultrasound before an abortion. The new version, which requires a noninvasive abdominal ultrasound, appeared aimed at defusing a mounting controversy over the bill that included spoofs on television shows.

The stalling of the legislation on Thursday also illustrated the divisions among Republicans over the bill. Opponents say it would confer legal status from the moment of conception and, in the process, cause huge legal uncertainties and lead to the banning of abortion. It would quickly be challenged in court, they say.

Too bad jerks like Mr. Blake didn’t think that legislation that defined life (something theologians and scientists haven’t been able to agree on over the centuries) should be decided by ALL the people rather than just a select few. He should have known that ambition and women would win out in the end. McDonnell still doesn’t get it that non-invasive ultrasound shows nothing but that’s OK, the bill’s sponsor pulled the bill. They should all be embarrassed.

Meanwhile, Bob Marshall had to duck and run for cover when some of the reproductive rights women found themselves standing in his presence. Virginia women were mad, fighting mad, and one Margaret Doyle appeared furious. As she was getting in Marshall’s face yelling “Shame Shame Shame,” she was literally hauled away by police.

Maybe for just a fleeting moment Bob Marshall knew what it was like for a young woman, heading in for an abortion she doesn’t want to have, to have to walk through a crowd of shouting anti abortion protesters doing ‘sidewalk ministry.’ Maybe for just a moment he got to feel a little of what women go through. I hope so and I expect he cried himself to sleep last night. His personhood bill, where a fertilized ovum had full personhood rights, just like you or I do, got sent back to committee to wait another year. He came so close. A miss is as good as a mile. At least he got saved by the police and didn’t get beaten up by a girl.

These bills should have never been introduced and should have never been passed. Were it not for Governor Bob McDonnell’s ambition, they would soon be Virginia law. Sadly, McDonnell’s ambition tells me that he knows he is out of step and that the women of America simply do not want this kind of restriction placed on them. They don’t want to be legally raped by the state and that the people of America don’t want Virginia defining when life begins.