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A divided Senate committee advanced separate bills today that would create a misdemeanor penalty for coercing an abortion and would expand the state’s wrongful death statute to include a fetus.

Sen. Ralph Smith, R-Roanoke County, has tried since 2010 to win support for a bill to create a misdemeanor penalty for forcing a pregnant female to have an abortion against her will. The Senate Education and Health Committee, now controlled by Republicans, advanced the bill today on a party-line vote of 8-7.

Senate Bill 277 also would allow a female who was coerced to have an abortion to sue the person responsible for forcing her to terminate a pregnancy. She also would have a cause of action for the unborn child.

“In many cases we hear horror stories where an older guy might put pressure on someone he has gotten pregnant — quite frequently a minor or someone who is simply afraid of him,” Smith said in explaining the motives for his bill.

Smith also raised concerns about victims of human trafficking who are lured into prostitution and could be forced to have abortions.

The bill was amended to define coercion as  “committing, attempting to commit, or threatening to commit physical harm to the woman, unborn child, or another person intended to compel a pregnant female to have an abortion performed against her will.”

The Senate panel also voted to day advanced a bill that would amend the state’s wrongful death statute to include a fetus. Senate Bill 674 would allow a pregnant woman to bring a civil claim if her unborn child is killed by the “wrongful act, neglect or default” of another party. Virginia already has a criminal law that applies to the death of a fetus, but no civil remedy.

“If a woman’s pregnancy is ended by virtue of someone’s act against her, whether it’s criminal or negligent, she has no cause of action,” said Sen. Tom Garrett, R-Louisa County, a co-sponsor of the bill. “You don’t need to search Google very long to find stories of couples who have worked years to conceive, only to have that pregnancy ended, that life taken, by virtue of the act of a drunk driver. And currently, as the code exists in Virginia, there’s no cause of action.”

Abortion rights advocates raised concern that the bill could apply to a pregnant woman whose actions directly or indirectly cause the death of her unborn child. But Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, the bill’s chief sponsor, said the bill “is not policing pregnancy.”

“It is merely to give her the right to a cause of action when a third party commits an act of negligence,” Stanley said. “Abortion is legal under Roe v. Wade and as long as it is within the parameters of that, that would not be a cause of action, either.”

On a party-line vote of 8-7, the committee sent the bill to the full Senate.

– Michael Sluss