Alliance for a Progressive Virginia

Tomorrow, with little to no warning the Senate Education and Health Committee will hear all the Senate bills that deal with women’s reproductive rights. There are bills that would repeal TRAP, repeal the ultrasound bill from last year and guarantee access to contraceptives. Tomorrow is APV’s lobby day and we will have representatives on hand to speak to this legislation. Come with us or join us there. The opposition’s goal is to sweep these bills away with little time for public reaction. DON’T LET THEM DO IT!!! These bills are:

Virginia General Assembly Building, 9th and Broad St.
Date of Meeting: January 17, 2013
Time and Place: 8:30 AM – Senate Room B

S.B. 783 APV SUPPORTS
Patron: McEachin
Birth control; definition. Adds a definition of birth control. “Birth control” means contraceptive methods that are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Birth control shall not be considered abortion for the purposes of Title 18.2.

S.B. 826 APV OPPOSES
Patron: Garrett
Funding for certain abortions. Repeals the section authorizing the Board of Health to fund abortions for women who meet the financial eligibility criteria of the State Plan for Medical Assistance in cases in which a physician certifies that he believes that the fetus would be born with a gross and totally incapacitating physical deformity or mental deficiency.

S.B. 1080 APV SUPPORTS
Patrons: Favola, Northam
Ultrasound imaging. Provides that no law or regulation of the Commonwealth or administrative action of an agent of the Commonwealth shall require that a person receive ultrasound imaging for nonmedical reasons or ultrasound imaging that is not medically indicated as a condition of receiving a medical procedure.

S.B. 1082 APV SUPPORTS
Patrons: Northam, Favola
Ultrasound prior to abortion. Removes the requirement that a woman undergo a transabdominal ultrasound prior to an abortion.

S.B. 1115 APV SUPPORTS
Patron: Herring
Classification as hospitals of certain facilities in which abortions are performed. Eliminates language classifying facilities in which five or more first trimester abortions per month are performed as hospitals for the purpose of compliance with regulations of the Board of Health related to construction, maintenance, operation, staffing, and equipping of hospitals.

S.B. 1116 APV SUPPORTS
Patron: Herring
Design and construction standards for certain facilities. Provides that regulations of the Board of Health for the construction, maintenance, operation, staffing, and equipping of hospitals shall apply to facilities in which five or more first trimester abortions per month are performed only when the design or construction of such facility is initiated after July 1, 2013. This bill includes an emergency clause.

Photo:Mark Brown

Today Saturday, March 3rd 2012, over a thousand people protested at the Capitol in Richmond against the continuing assault on women’s reproductive rights. Speakers from NOW Virginia, Women’s Strike Force PAC and Alliance for Progressive Values spoke before a well behaved and attentive crowd that included mothers with children, students and many women from the generation that fought for and won many of our fundamental reproductive rights. Ostensibly, the rally was in opposition to HB462, which mandates an unnecessary and medically useless ultrasound for a woman seeking an abortion. APV has worked hard against this poorly contrived piece of legislation that claims to provide women with more information about their pregnancy while in fact acting only to place further barriers between Virginia women and their right to choose. APV’s position on HB462 is spelled out in our petition to the Governor here, which we urge you to sign, but in fact this rally was about the ongoing war on birth control and abortion that has been waged throughout the 2012 session here in Richmond. Numerous bills that would make abortion illegal, make birth control illegal, potentially require police investigations of miscarriages, and end funding for women on Medicaid who’s pregnancies have gone terribly wrong and most be terminated, have come through the legislature, and we have been successful in defeating almost all of them. But the struggle continues. This year we have seen a full court press against the most fundamental of human rights, the right to control one’s own body. Today, as the session winds down, APV members once again stood alongside our brothers and sisters from across the state to implore our elected officials to come to their senses and stop this head long slide aback into the dark ages to paraphrase pro-choice Senator Janet Howell. We are deeply gratified at the large turn out to this peaceful protest and we want to thank the organizers, some of whom are APV members, for their hard work. However the Governor decides to deal with HB462, we want you to know that we will not go away. We are pledged to stand up against those who would try and turn back the clock on reproductive rights, this year, next year and always. Thank you everyone who came out and everyone who was there in spirit.