‘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).