Dear Friend,
Women’s healthcare and reproductive rights are in serious jeopardy and the situation is becoming more dire by the day. If you don’t believe me, look at the headlines over the last few days. The South Carolina legislature considered a bill that would not only characterize abortion as homicide but make women susceptible to a death sentence. Yes, you read that right – women could be put to death for having an abortion. Or at least serve 30 years in prison.
And in Idaho, a hospital has said they will stop delivering babies because the state’s new near total ban on abortion means doctors are fleeing, afraid to practice medicine there. But, the real victims, pregnant women who won’t have a nearby hospital when they go into labor and may not have a doctor to attend them as they deliver their baby.
Right here at home in Virginia, in this most recent General Assembly Session, bills were introduced to define life as beginning at conception which certainly would lead to a complete prohibition on abortion and on types of birth control.
Plus, Governor Youngkin and his Republicans colleagues opposed legislation that would have prohibited law enforcement from tracking women’s menstrual periods. Yes, you read that right – nothing is private or sacred when Republicans want control over women. They don’t care whether it’s personal data, they don’t care whether it deprives women of doctors or hospitals, they don’t care about women making their own decisions.
And that could happen. We only have a one vote margin of senators who respect women and believe they should have agency over their bodies.
I have a brand new district and I need to introduce myself to lots of new voters. I need to make sure I’m re-elected so I can continue to stand strong for women’s rights, for women to be making the decisions about their bodies and for women to have access to doctors.
I need your help. Virginia women need your help – they need us to elect a strong pro-women majority in the State Senate so that any of these anti women bills proposed by the Republicans, supported by our anti-choice, anti-woman governor, go down to defeat.
And most importantly, I will continue to work every day to stand up for women. To make sure women have access to health care and that they have privacy to make their own decisions and have their own knowledge about their bodies.
Together we can do this. Together we can make sure Virginia does not become Idaho or South Carolina or the repressive place Governor Youngkin and his colleagues want.
But it’s going to take all of us. |
