The delegate who introduced a bill to legalize infanticide in Virginia isn’t totally heartless, as some critics have said.
She does have a place in her heart for at least one defenseless creature: the lowly inchworm.
So even as Delegate Kathy Tran of Virginia’s 42nd House district in leftist Northern Virginia would permit a mother and doctor to murder a baby as it emerges from the birth canal, she would ride to the rescue of a bug.
Infanticide Legal?
Tran, a refugee from Red Vietnam, invited a hailstorm of criticism when she tried to put an infanticide bill past the Old Dominion’s House of Delegates.
H.R. 2491 would have permitted unrestricted “abortion” after a mother had begun delivering a child. The bill, as its summary said,
Eliminates the requirement that an abortion in the second trimester of pregnancy and prior to the third trimester be performed in a hospital. The bill eliminates all the procedures and processes, including the performance of an ultrasound, required to effect a woman’s informed written consent to the performance of an abortion; however, the bill does not change the requirement that a woman’s informed written consent be first obtained. The bill eliminates the requirement that two other physicians certify that a third trimester abortion is necessary to prevent the woman’s death or impairment of her mental or physical health, as well as the need to find that any such impairment to the woman’s health would be substantial and irremediable. The bill also removes language classifying facilities that perform five or more first-trimester abortions per month as hospitals for the purpose of complying with regulations establishing minimum standards for hospitals.
House Majority Chief Todd Gilbert of Virginia’s 15th district asked Tran the obvious question during a hearing on the bill: Would the bill would permit a doctor to murder an infant as it was being born?
Tran tried to duck the truth: “You know, that would be a decision that the doctor — the physician — and the woman would make,” she said.
{modulepos inner_text_ad}
But Gilbert hadn’t asked who would decide whether to murder the child during delivery. He asked whether Tran’s bill would permit it.
“I understand that, Gilbert replied. “I’m asking if your bill allows that.”
Replied Tran, “My bill would allow that, yes.”
Unsurprisingly, video of the exchange went viral, and Virginia’s leftist governor, Ralph Northam, a pediatric neurosurgeon, backed Tran. Northam stated he would murder babies — or at least let them die in benign neglect — after they were born.
“If a mother is in labor,” Northam said, “I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
Northam tried to qualify his remark by claiming that such a procedure is reserved for a “fetus” with a “severe deformity,” or which is “non-viable,” but the damage was done.
The committee tabled the bill, which defeated it, and the mask was off Virginia’s Democratic Party.
Infanticide is their new cause.
Cankerworms Needn’t Worry
Meanwhile, Tran also introduced a bill, also defeated, that would stop the eradication of the fall cankerworm (larva shown), a major pest responsible for significant damage to forests.
“No locality … shall spray any pesticide intended to suppress an infestation of the fall cankerworm during the period beginning March 1 and ending August 1,” H.R. 2495 says.
So Tran is a menace not only to the unborn, but also to the state’s trees.
According to a report in American Entomologist, “Fall cankerworm is the most common native defoliator in Virginia, with outbreaks occurring approximately every five years for the last 60 years,” the magazine reported. “More than any other native forest insect in Virginia, fall cankerworm is known for large, severe, recurring outbreaks in oak-dominated forests,” and “fall cankerworm is second only to the gypsy moth in terms of the frequency of major outbreaks and the degree of defoliation.”
The fall cankerworm targets the state’s oaks, the magazine reported, “particularly at higher elevations among the heavily forested Appalachian Mountains.” Tran’s little pal defoliated 572,436 acres of forest in Virginia from 2012 through 2014.
The cankerworm has been a major defoliator in Gilbert’s district in the Shenandoah Valley.
Image: Joseph Berger, Bugwood.org
