Sign the Petition: No Ban on Abortion in the Healthcare Bill

Call on Senate Leader Reid: Stop Abortion Coverage Ban

The House of Representatives passed health-reform legislation that included an anti-choice amendment that will seriously jeopardize women’s access to abortion.

The Stupak-Pitts amendment makes it virtually impossible for private insurance companies that participate in the new health system to offer abortion coverage to women.

This would have the effect of denying women the right to use their own personal, private funds to purchase an insurance plan with abortion coverage in the new health system.

We must stop health-care reform from being enacted with this ban!

Sign our petition calling on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to stand firm against a ban on abortion coverage for women in the new health system.

https://secure.prochoiceamerica.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=4013

What’s Next for the Commonwealth?

After watching last night’s dismal election results, we woke up this morning, determined to see the good that has come from yesterday’s pro-choice defeats. By and large, the election results don’t bode well for the reproductive rights community. However, we think there are several silver linings to consider, cheer about, and use as an incentive to get to work!

First off, we must offer a monumental thank you to you, our members. You volunteered your time and energy to NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia and our endorsed candidates. Whether you visited our blog, followed us on Twitter, shared YouTube videos our your Facebook page, knocked doors, made phone calls, or donated financial resources, your efforts are greatly appreciated and noticed. All said and done, our Pro-Choice Team made more than 11,000 phone calls, and knocked on more than 2,500 doors. Many of the House of Delegate races would not be as close as they were, were it not for your actions.

Secondly, there are some pieces of good news from yesterday’s results:
1. Of the 38 candidate’s that our Political Action Committee endorsed, 22 of them emerged victorious, giving us a 58% winning record.
2. We have turned the 93rd House District pro-choice with the election of Robin Abbott, who has unseated Phil Hamilton.
3. We also have several new, proudly pro-choice candidates who will replace retired leaders, including Mark Keam(Vienna), Kaye Kory (Fairfax Co. ), Scott Surovell (Alexandria), Patrick Hope (Arlington), and Betsy Carr (Richmond). Our congratulations go out to all of them.

And, we have a large dose of pro-choice momentum to win back both Ken Cuccinelli’s and Ken Stolle’s Senate seats in two upcoming special elections. We’ll be sure to keep you posted as those contests move along. We must build on the momentum coming from yesterday’s defeats; we must mobilize Virginians to vote their pro-choice values and earn two new reproductive rights advocates seats in the Senate. Stay tuned!

Our Commonwealth may have elected three staunchly anti-choice leaders for Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General, but it’s time to pick ourselves up, dust off our shoulders, and recognize there’s work to be done. We haven’t let the election of staunchly, anti-choice zealots stop us before, and we certainly won’t let it happen now. Too much is at stake, and the women and families of Virginia need us.

Again, thank you for all you already do. We’ll be letting you know about what the next few months look like shortly.

Letter to the Editor in Roanoke Times!

Congrats to being published in the Roanoke Times, Swarna.

Ken Cuccinelli won’t protect women’s freedoms

Ken Cuccinelli won’t protect women’s freedoms

I got so mad when I heard about Bob McDonnell’s anti-woman views and thought it couldn’t get any worse. But Republican candidate for attorney general Ken Cuccinelli came along — boasting about being called “one of the staunchest … conservatives the Old Dominion has to offer.”

It disturbs me that just two years ago, Cuccinelli co-patroned HB 2797, which defined human life as starting from the moment of fertilization and classified embryos as people, and he wants to outlaw abortions even in cases of rape or incest.

He’s spent his state Senate career repeatedly opposing reproductive rights. Last year, he sponsored an amendment to defund Planned Parenthood’s services that tremendously benefit women. And thanks to him, the state Department of Motor Vehicles now sells “choose life” license plates, directly funneling money into deceptive crisis pregnancy centers that disseminate medically inaccurate information.

Cuccinelli has a personal agenda: to chip away women’s freedoms. As a Virginia woman who’s sick of politicians meddling with my basic rights, my vote on Nov. 3 is for Steve Shannon, who won’t let government take over women’s minds and bodies.

SWARNA VADHIRAJAN
RADFORD
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/letters/wb/224084

Our Newest Video: Bob McDonnell Plays Games with Women’s Health

Check out our newest video and please share it with all your friends, especially those voting on November 3rd! We need a pro-choice ticket- please support Creigh Deeds, Jody Wagner, and Steve Shannon!

Week of Action to Expose Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Don’t Be Tricked, Be Treated!

We were so excited to see the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Choices Campus Leadership Program is planning a Week of Action to expose Crisis Pregnancy Centers!

Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) are fake clinics that are most often run by anti-choice and religiously-affiliated organizations and staffed by volunteers, most of whom are not medically-licensed. They usually offer free pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, pregnancy option counseling, short-term healthcare and material assistance, and often have ties to adoption agencies.

Though they claim to be unbiased and supportive, the fundamental goal of most CPCs is to prevent women from exploring their reproductive health options, which they do by providing medically inaccurate and intentionally deceptive information on reproductive health, fetal development, contraception, and abortion. They push women to delay decision-making by suggesting the likelihood of a miscarriage and by estimating gestational development incorrectly so that women are less able to obtain an abortion.

There are more than 58 of these deceptive, fake clinics in Virginia (a map of these centers is available here). For more information on CPC’s, feel free to visit the links at the end of this post!

The week of action is scheduled for October 25-31st and is titled “Don’t Get Tricked, Get Treated.” The Feminist Majority has some great ideas, including a haunted clinic, a film screening, and our favorite, a photo campaign slide show! Check out all the great ideas they have here, and feel free to use them even if you aren’t on a campus—CPCs everywhere need to be exposed!

More Information on CPCs:

Common Crisis Pregnancy Center Tactics—deceptive tactics CPCs typically employ.

Where You Can Go For Comprehensive, Unbiased Crisis Pregnancy Help—Websites of organizations that can offer judgment-free, medically accurate information as you make a decision about an unintended pregnancy

Eleven Common Crisis Pregnancy Center Lies—Some of the common lies that CPCs tell women, as well as factually-cited responses to such erroneous claims.

Crisis Pregnancy Centers in the Media

We Want To Hear From You—Learn more about how you can take action and share your own stories about CPCs!

True Stories of women’s experiences with CPCs.

National Abortion Federation (NAF) CPC Fact Sheet.

Party for Progressives This Thursday

Grab a drink with progressives from across the Virginia/DC Metro area to hear from special guest speakers who will talk about what we need to do to help win Virginia’s upcoming elections.

Mitch Stewart, the Executive Directive of Organizing for America, will join us at the happy hour and speak about the urgency of getting involved in the final days of the Virginia election.

The Happy Hour at Current is being organized by:

- Arlington Young Democrats
- DC for Democracy
- DC for Obama
- DC Democratic Party
- DC for Obama
- DC Young Democrats
- Democratic GAIN
- Generation Obama
- Gertrude Stein Club
- Montgomery County Young Democrats
- NARAL Pro-Choice VA
- Planned Parenthood of Metro Washington
- SAFO (South Asians for Opportunity)
- Virginia Young Democrats
- WIN (the Women’s Information Network).

Happy Hour drink specials will be available from 6:30 – 8 p.m.

The event is at Current at 1215 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington D.C.

A ‘Rust-y’ Record on Choice

We’ve been busy talking to voters in House District 86 about Stevens Miller but we wanted to make sure to give everyone access to what we know about Delegate Tom Rust’s record on choice and reproductive health care. While he continues to claim he is a moderate, and works to promote a bi-partisan agenda, we’ve only seen him cater to the right when it comes to his work in Richmond. More importantly, he has voted on at least 17 anti-reproductive healthcare bills, including the following:

1. Rust voted in favor of 2007 Budget Amendment 4-5.04 to prohibit Medicaid funding in cases of rape, incest, and profound fetal abnormality.
2. Rust voted in favor of 2002 HB563 which would have allowed health care providers to refuse to dispense emergency contraception in emergency rooms and pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions.
3. Rust voted in favor of 2007 HB 1883 to require abortion clinics to face TRAP laws- targeted regulation of abortion providers. This would have effectively shut down almost, if not all, clinics in Virginia, attempting to hold them to architectural standards that most medical clinics do not meet.
4. Rust voted in favor 2006 HB 164 for the Family Life Education to include abstinence as ‘the accepted norm’ and that ‘heterosexual marriage’ must be honored.

For a complete listing of all of his anti-choice bills, visit: http://www.naralva.org/action/rustsrecord.shtml

We know that voters in the 86th district want  a pro-choice delegate, and we know that the residents of the Commonweath need a pro-choice house. It’s why we’re working so hard for Stevens Miller.

McDonnell’s Thesis: Taking it to the Streets

We just made a video where we asked everyday people to read excerpts from Bob McDonnell’s thesis. We recorded their reactions to reading the actual words that Mr. McDonnell wrote for his Master’s thesis only three years before becoming a Delegate for the Commonwealth. Take a look, let us know what you think, and please make sure to pass it along to your friends. With only 21 days until the election, we need to make sure every voter knows just how ‘detrimental to society’ Bob McDonnell would be as our next governor.

TODAY: Happy Hour @ Madam’s Organ!

Happy Hour TODAY @ Madam’s Organ in Adams Morgan!

Come join us for an other fabulous happy hour fundraiser in Adams Morgan. Madam’s Organ will generously donate $1 per drink sold is during happy hour (including sodas and juices) and 20% of food sales to NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia. So come thirsty and hungry and bring friends!

Also featuring our ever-popular Raffle for Choice with gift cards and goodies from local businesses!

Where: 2461 18th Street, NW, Admam’s Morgan

When: 5:00-9:00pm

Suggested donation $5 See you there!

Delegate O’Bannon’s Moment to Shine: We’re Not Fans…

To the Editor,

In the article, (Delegate O’Bannon Says Shields’ Charges Are False, September 18, 2009), Delegate O’Bannon continues to insist that his vote in support for HB563 would not have affected the ability for rape and incest survivors to obtain emergency contraception. This is the real false charge.

As the Delegate who is proud to proclaim his standing as the ‘only physician in the House of Delegates,’ Dr. John O’Bannon should know that emergency contraception and birth control are not medical abortions. They are dosages of hormones used to prevent pregnancy in the first place, and serve as commonsense measures to reduce the number of abortions.

HB563, however, was a thinly veiled attempt to expand the already-existing conscience clause, which allows doctors and other medical practitioners the right to refuse to perform an abortion- surgical or medical. The specific goal of HB563 was to give pharmacists and medical providers this same right of refusal when it came to birth control and emergency contraception- hormone dosages that prevent an unintended pregnancy. It is simply mind-blowing that someone who is so vocally anti-choice would also be so vocally anti-prevention. But, such is John O’Bannon’s record.

In his nine years in office, Dr. O’Bannon has voted against more than 35 anti-reproductive healthcare bills, including 2003’s SB1104, which would have legally acknowledged that contraception is ‘not subject to or governed by the abortion law,’ because it is not an abortant.

This is a Bob McDonnell moment for Delegate Dr. John O’Bannon. O’Bannon is being asked about a past action- a vote on HB563- and claiming it isn’t what it seems. I’m not all too surprised to find that Bob McDonnell, the notoriously anti-woman and anti-reproductive healthcare gubernatorial candidate, was, in fact, a co-patron of HB563. McDonnell’s agenda has been to deny women access to reproductive healthcare, and O’Bannon’s vote yielded more power to his ideological agenda.

To NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, it seems as though Dr. O’Bannon, delegate for the 73rd district, either failed to research what the bill proposed, or simply dismissed scientific fact about birth control and emergency contraception, despite being a doctor. Either of these options is frightening, and inexcusable.

Nine years as delegate is simply nine years too many for the women of Henrico County. When it comes to reproductive health care, these voters deserve better than Delegate Dr. John O’Bannon.

Tarina Keene
Executive Director, NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia