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Senator for life

Date published: 5/23/2003

IRAQ MAY BE SLOWLY moving toward pluralism, but in some segments of the area's Republican Party, the Shiites are on a merry purge of the ideologically impure. Stafford state Sen. John Chichester, who has more time in office than some of the purifiers have out of trainer pants, suddenly finds himself lumped with Democratic infidels as a soft-on-abortion big spender. Do tell.

The revelations about Mr. Chichester, who sinisterly disguises his liberalism with a conservative voting record, come from primary challenger Mike Rothfeld. Mr. Rothfeld, whose mailers describe him as an officer at his church, knows he can't unseat a popular incumbent senator by pelting him with posies, but it's clear from his campaign literature that Deacon Rothfeld doesn't consider forbearance or fair-mindedness divine virtues. Take Mr. Chichester's "record" of "opposing pro-life legislation," as one Rothfeld booster put it in a mass-mailed letter.

In truth, Mr. Chichester doesn't have a perfect pro-life voting record as gauged by the Virginia Society for Human Life, but it's one that if adopted by all legislatures and courts would make abortion much less common. A VSHL report on key Senate votes between 1978 and 2003 reveals that Mr. Chichester voted for abortion restrictions 90 percent of the time, in 18 out of 20 cases.

The two "wrong" votes came in 1994 and involved tweakings of a George Allen-backed bill requiring notification of parents whose minor daughters were contemplating abortion. Sen. Chichester's demurrals were over the age at which the legislation would be triggered and whether other family members might sometimes be notified in lieu of parents. That year on the main issue--whether girls in trouble and "helpful" clinicians had a right to set up an abortion all by themselves--Mr. Chichester voted for a notification law in a 20-20 Senate split. This forced then-Lt. Gov. Donald Beyer to save the day for 13-year-olds' sexual liberty with a tie-breaking "nay."

In the Senate Education & Health Committee, on which Mr. Chichester sat for 24 years, he voted in line with the VSHL 11 out of 13 times from 1992 to 2003. The exceptions? One (in 1999) concerned abortion-clinic licensing; the other (in 2000) required doctors to report complications from abortions. It's legitimate for Mr. Rothfeld to challenge him on these votes--or, indeed, any others.

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Date published: 5/23/2003