Prior to leaving Richmond, I attended the state senate hearings for Reproductive Health Protection Act (RHPA). This bill sought to get rid of the 24-hour waiting period and 2 visit requirement that was required for a person to receive an abortion. It also combated TRAP laws which restricted abortion access through requirements on the buildings in which an abortion could be preformed. The requirements were for things such as the number of parking paces the building had or the width of the hallways.

The most interesting day for me to visit the senate hearings was the day that I got to hear and give a testimony for the bill. I was originally supposed to read the testimony of someone that could not make it to the hearing but wanted to express how the bill would help them. Since we ran out of time, I was only able to stand up and express my support for the bill, which district I vote in (my state senator was one of the co-authors on the bill), and which organization I was with (my fellowship was through the organization sponsoring the bill). However, being able to listen to everyone’s testimonies, from both side of the issue, was very interesting to me. Some people were appealing to pure emotion while others were trying to appeal to logic, citing how any of the previous restrictions were not necessary for preforming a safe abortion.

The main connection I saw to this class was in our discussion of ethics. While no one explicitly came forth saying “I am using this normative claim and from there appealing this approach to ethics,” it was still very much present in the arguments that were being made. You could trace back the arguments on both sides to very different normative claims, either a right to autonomy or a right to life coupled with the claim that a fetus constitutes as alive. These claims could see seen in the carefully worded testimonies that people were giving, where the words used are chosen to portray the values that are etched into someone’s support or opposition of the bill.

The bill ended up passing both the state senate and the House of Delegates. It was signed into law on April 10th, ahead of schedule, to ensure access to safe, legal abortions during the epidemic.