Republican Governor, Glenn Youngkin, vetoes the Right to Contraception Act
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed the Right to Contraception Act on May 17th. Reproductive rights are widely supported in Virginia, but he chose to vote in favor of businesses that might have a problem with providing contraception through their employer-sponsored health insurance plans. I guess that means they don’t care about their female employees or the spouses and daughters of their male employees who might need contraception, or even if they need contraceptive products for reasons other than contraception. That’s a thing. Some women require hormonal birth control to deal with heavy periods or irregular cycles. Some women would miss work or school on a regular basis without this treatment. The bill wasn’t going to require insurance plans to pay for abortions, but to pay for contraception that could in fact prevent abortions. WTF?
This was a bill that passed the Virginia General Assembly with bipartisan support and would have protected the rights of people in Virginia to use and doctors to prescribe contraception, including the pill, IUDs, emergency contraceptives, and condoms.
This is from a The Hill as reported by a Fox station:
“Polling consistently shows there is broad bipartisan support for birth control. According to the annual Gallup values and beliefs poll released last year, 88 percent of Americans said birth control was morally acceptable.”
Contraceptive care is already protected on the federal level by the Griswold v. Connecticut case decided by the Supreme Court in 1965. Why does this right need to be protected at the state level? Well, we thought abortion was protected at the federal level by Roe but the Dobbs decision overturned Roe and then abortion rights were determined at the state level. Now, abortion is totally banned in 14 states.
When Roe was overturned, Justice Thomas argued in his concurring opinion that in future cases, the Court should reconsider precedent that relied on the same principles as Roe – including Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court’s 1965 landmark decision that recognized the right of married people to obtain contraceptives – and overturn those decisions. It could be on the chopping block, so this is why we need to be concerned about access to contraception being protected at the state level.
Right now, contraception is only protected in 14 states and DC. Virginia is not one of those 14 states.
Congress tried to pass a bill at the federal level to protect the right to contraception in 2022 right after the Dobbs decision overturned Roe, but it did not pass.
My U.S. representative, Rob Wittman, voted against it. I need to highlight this for my readers who might also get the chance to vote against Rob Wittman this November. Again, even though reproductive rights are widely supported in Virginia, a person representing women in Virginia voted against them.
Democrats in the Senate are expected to tee up the Right to Contraception Act again next month. Pay attention to how your Senators and Representative vote on this, so you know if you can support them in November or not.
Find your Senators and your Congressman here or click on the following picture.
First, contact your senators to tell them to support the Right to Contraception Act that is expected to be brought up in the Senate next week.
Then, see how your representative voted on the bill in 2022 at this roll call site, so you can see if you want to vote for them in November or not.
Not every Senator is up for re-election, but EVERY SINGLE congressional representative is up for re-election this November!
EVERY SINGLE ONE!
So, why is there even an issue with contraception?
It may seem unlikely that contraceptives will be banned or severely restricted since they are used by so many right now, but you can see how it is starting with emergency contraception (the morning after pill) and Intrauterine devices (IUDs). Anti-abortion activists have problems with these because they believe they prevent a fertilized egg from being implanted, which is not true. They prevent an egg from being fertilized. So, the Anti-choicers would deny emergency contraception to a woman whose birth control failed or to a woman who was raped.
IUDs, implanted in the uterus by a health care provider, prevent pregnancy by stopping sperm from reaching and fertilizing eggs. They slow sperm down and thicken the lining of the cervix to prevent sperm from entering. Abortion opponents believe or want the public to believe that IUDs work by preventing a fertilized egg from being implanted in the uterus. They refer to the text from an FDA pamphlet from 1977 that supposedly said "IUDs seem to interfere in some manner with the implantation of the fertilized egg in the lining of the uterine cavity. The IUD does not prevent ovulation." There is a possibility that the IUD could fail at preventing fertilization as is seen with the 1% failure rate, where pregnancy is the result. Something else to keep in mind is that not all fertilized eggs implant in the uterus successfully even when the woman is not using contraception.
The CURRENT FDA literature about the Copper IUD says the following:
The IUD prevents sperm from reaching the egg, from fertilizing the egg, and may prevent the egg from attaching (implanting) in the womb (uterus).
It does not stop the ovaries from making an egg (ovulating) each month.
The CURRENT FDA literature about hormonal IUDs says the following:
It thickens the mucus of your cervix, which makes it harder for sperm to get to the egg, and also thins the lining of your uterus.
The main mechanism of the IUD is to prevent the egg from being fertilized.
Here is the language from ACOG from 2015 that was reaffirmed in 2022. These dates are way more recent than 1977.
“None of the FDA-approved contraceptive methods are abortifacients because they do not interfere with a pregnancy and are not effective after a fertilized egg has implanted successfully in the uterus.”
So, if something happens at the federal level to restrict contraception or to no longer protect it, like with Dobbs, then anti-abortion opponents will pursue legislation at the state level to ban contraception using the disinformation that EC, IUDs and hormonal birth control are abortifacients. They are not.
Youngkin is not up for re-election, so he doesn’t care about what the majority of Virginians want, but he will still be Governor through 2025 and will have the chance to veto this legislation again during the next session. He hurt his party in state elections by supporting a 15-week ban in 2023. Maybe he is just trying to get to be Trump’s VP by going against a bill that Democrats supported in Virginia, one that most Virginians supported. Whatever…..
Again, figure out how your federal and state level elected officials voted on contraception and vote them out if they do not support access to contraception.
And as always, links to my favorites: