Action Alert: Birthing People and Shield Laws
Today, all Democrats on a Senate Education and Health subcommittee refused a simple technical amendment to clarify that mothers, not men, give birth! A bill (HB 781) carried by Delegate Charniele Herring (D-Arlington), which is intended to collect data to help improve maternal care and quality, purposefully uses the term “birthing people” instead of mothers. When Senator Tara Durant (R-Fredericksburg) offered a friendly technical amendment to change birthing people to mothers, all democrats on the subcommittee voted against the technical amendment. They really do think men can have babies!
Tomorrow, the full House will vote on two bills patroned by Senator Barbara Favola (D-Arlington), the senator who chairs the subcommittee mentioned above, that seek to shield abortion providers who violate other state’s laws and prevent the collection of evidence to prosecute crimes like fetal homicide and forced abortions through sex trafficking.
Please CLICK HERE to email your House member to OPPOSE abortion protection bills!
SB 15 (D-Favola) would prohibit the Governor from extraditing a person in Virginia who has committed abortion-related crimes in other states. This is designed to create a safe-haven for people who are mailing unsafe abortion-inducing drugs from Virginia into other states where such chemical abortions are illegal.
SB 16 (D-Favola) seek to prohibit any search warrants from being issued that could obtain information about “menstrual health data” in any form. These bills are a sly way of trying to prevent detection of illegal abortions, since information about pregnancy is often determined by reference to a woman’s last menstrual cycle. As a constitutional matter, search warrants can only be issued upon a showing of probable cause that an actual crime likely occurred. So, in the instances of fetal homicide, forced abortions through sex trafficking, or minor abortions without parental knowledge or consent, this bill would prevent collection of evidence to prosecute such crimes.
