Madam Chair Price and Members of the Committee: 

I’m John Mize. I serve as CEO of Americans United for Life, the nation’s premier law and policy organization advancing the human right to life, and I’m testifying today on behalf of AUL and our hundreds of thousands of supporters and friends. I also serve as a Board Member at Mental Health America.

I come to you today to speak on behalf of Virginians of goodwill who support life-affirming law and policy and, therefore, oppose HJ1.  First, I’d like to clarify that elective abortion is the intentional termination of an innocent preborn human life.  Abortion is not healthcare.   HJ1 swings the pendulum too far toward abortion on demand when the overwhelming majority of Virginians support a more modest approach such as a 12 or 15-week limit.  There is simply no denying that protecting life in the womb is supported by science and biology, morality, embryology, and all of the world’s major faith traditions. Even the law here in the Commonwealth protects life in the womb except in the context of abortion, our fetal homicide law makes the “unlawful and intentional killing of a fetus” a class 2 felony.

My wife and I have been foster parents for over a decade. We’ve had over 30 children in our house, including our youngest adopted son, who was born to a homeless mother who could have had an abortion but she chose to give Jay life.  All life is important, and I urge you to put politics and the business model of big abortion aside and think about the real ethical, moral, legal, and societal implications of such an extreme overreach that would allow people to kill their child if they didn’t prefer the sex or if the child was diagnosed with down syndrome.  

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