The executive director of the pro-choice group WV FREE, Margaret Chapman Pomponio, told MetroNews it seems the committee’s discussion has centered on ideological and political grounds rather than the health and well-being of women and families.

“It’s just simply not the compassionate thing to do to penalize poor women in the way some of those legislators are suggesting,” Chapman Pomponio said.

The state Supreme Court’s Panepinto decision in 1993, authored by Justice Margaret Workman, requires the state to pay for abortions for poor women.

“I’m often asked what medically necessary means,” Pomponio said. “It is whatever the patient and the doctor deem is medically necessary. It is a legal medical procedure and we don’t see any other procedures singled out this way.”

Source : WV MetroNews