House adds additional right to ‘Women’s Bill of Rights’

CHARLESTON - After an amendment was made to an amendment offered by the minority party to a bill claiming to be a bill of rights for women and girls, the West Virginia House of Delegates approved Friday it would remove unwanted sexual contact from spouses as an exception to sexual offenses.

House Bill 5243, creating the Women's Bill of Rights, was on second reading and amendment stage Friday. The bill will be on third reading and up for passage Monday.

HB 5243 would define sex-based terms in State Code for "woman," "girl" and "mother" to refer to biological females except in cases of developmental and genetic anomalies or accidents, requires a person's biological sex be set at birth, and changes references to "gender" to "sex." It also prohibits use of the term "gender identity," and other subjective terms.

The bill prohibits the unfair treatment of males and females, including the providing of separate single-sex living facilities, locker rooms, bathrooms, domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers based on biological sex. It would also change the definition of equal, stating that it does not mean "same" or "identical" when it comes to equality of the sexes.

An amendment to the bill offered by the House Democratic caucus and House Minority Leader Pro Tempore Kayla Young, D-Kanawha, would have stripped out all of the provision of the bill as amended by the House Judiciary Committee earlier this week. Instead, Young's amendment would have inserted what she believes a real women's bill of rights should be.

"We were looking at this bill and the title 'Women’s Bill of Rights' really, really caught my eye," Young said. "So, I wanted to do an amendment and I wanted to talk about what a women’s bill of rights could look like if women had equal rights under the law."

Young's amendment would have removed the sales tax on feminine hygiene products, and codified the providing of free feminine hygiene products for those incarcerated, under state custody and supervision, and public school students. It would have required implicit bias training for perinatal healthcare professionals and updated data and reporting requirements for maternal morbidity and mortality.

The amendment would have stated that every person, regardless of sex, has a right to make and carry out one's own healthcare decisions. It would have required the state to provide at least eight weeks of paid leave to public employees. The amendment included a fair pay and pay transparency provision, required insurance coverage for infertility services, and removed a provision in state criminal statutes that exempted spouses from being charged for unwanted sexual contact.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Tom Fast, R-Fayette, opposed Young's amendment, saying the amendment would go against the point of the bill.

"It would completely frustrate the purpose of this bill and it would completely replace what the bill is," Fast said. "This strike-and-insert (amendment) would completely strike out the existing bill as we have it and replace it with this whole litany of different bills that they’re trying to use to replace the existing bill."

After a discussion of Young's amendment and a recess, Del. Brandon Steele, R-Raleigh, offered an amendment to Young's amendment. Steele's amendment stripped out the language of Young's amendment with the bill as amended by the House Judiciary Committee, but kept Young's provision to remove the marital exemption for those charged with sexual assault.

"There is an affirmative defense of marriage to the actual act of sexual assault in our code," Steele said. "We’re one of a handful of states that still have that and I would urge support for us joining the rest of the country and getting rid of that."

Young's amendment as amended by Steele was adopted in a 91-0 vote, though attempts to amend in a provision exempting the state Human Rights Act from the bill and inserting the right of individuals to carry out their own health decisions regardless of sex were rejected.

House Minority Leader Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell, pointed out that by adopting Steele's amendment, it was another insult to women such as Young, who sponsored the original amendment, and Del. Kathy Hess Crouse, R-Putnam, who was the lead sponsor of HB 5243.

"I find it very interesting that ... yet again, a man is telling a woman how to do it," Hornbuckle said. "I find that ironic on a women’s bill of rights. It flies in the face of both the gentle ladies. So if we vote for this, we are furthermore codifying that they’re not equal to men. I find that very ironic that yet again, men are going to trump women."