On Friday, Youngkin vetoed Senate Bill 237 and House Bill 609, which would have protected Virginians’ access to contraception like IUDs, condoms, and birth control. Advocates say the bills were necessary after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas called previous rulings on contraception access into question.

Lara Bury, a resident of the Springfield area of Fairfax County, said her daughter uses birth control to help manage what her mom calls hormonal ovarian issues.

“The way to manage these symptoms for her was birth control. And with birth control and medical care, my daughter has the freedom to live her life now and to safeguard her future family when or if she chooses,” Bury told reporters on Monday. “Her medical options, our medical options should be protected, not used by politicians where the end result is harm to women.”

Read More at wfxrtv.com

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WOODSTOCK, Va. — A group of supporters in Warren County is prepared to support their neighbors in Shenandoah County fight against an effort to reverse school names back to their original Confederate names.

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“They represent a safeguarding of our rights, an assertion of our values and a commitment to the well-being of our community,” Rae Pickett of the Virginia League for Planned Parenthood said in a press conference.

A bill that passed through the Democratic-controlled General Assembly gives Virginians the right to obtain contraceptives and engage in contraception. The bill also includes language giving healthcare providers the right to provide contraceptives and contraception-related information.

“Banning IVF and contraception are the next targets for extremist politicians and judges,” Delegate Destiny LeVere Bolling said. “We know that any type of barrier to access will disproportionately hurt Black women like myself.”

The unusual delivery of petition signatures comes as Youngkin has until April 8 to sign, veto or offer amendments to all bills passed. The legislation enjoyed minimal bipartisan support, with five Republicans in the House of Delegates and none in the state Senate voting to approve the measure.

Delegate Ghazala Hashmi, the bill’s senate patron, told reporters that she has heard from Republican colleagues that political pressure swayed their votes.

“Even my Republican male colleagues who voted against the legislation have privately shared that their spouses, their daughters, their nieces, their cousins all support the right to contraception,” Hashmi said. “Many of them, unfortunately, are voting against their own conscience on this issue.”

The push from reproductive rights advocates comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning the right to abortion afforded through Roe v. Wade.

“None of us would have thought, I think, that access to contraceptives would actually be the next battleground in our fight for reproductive healthcare,” Hashmi said. “The threat is very real.”

Virginia already enjoys unfettered access to contraceptives, but Democrats warn that following the overturning of Roe, anything is on the table. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a Virginia resident, wrote in a concurring opinion on the Dobbs decision that the high court should reconsider its ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut.

In the 1965 decision, the Supreme Court found Connecticut law prohibiting the use of any method to prevent conception unconstitutional. The seven-judge majority found it violated the right to marital privacy, effectively establishing the basis for the right to privacy concerning intimate practices.

“States across the South have pursued draconian rollbacks of our reproductive rights,” Delegate Rae Cousins said. “The goals of these extremist politicians and judges could not be more clear. They want to control our bodies and our ability to seek the care that we deserve.”

A proposed bill in Oklahoma, known as the Oklahoma Right To Human Life Act, originally intended to place new restrictions on intrauterine devices used for contraceptive purposes. The Act also revokes some contraceptive medications like Plan B and the morning-after pill’s over-the-counter status, making it only available through a physician’s prescription.

Hashmi also pointed to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling finding frozen embryos are children under state law. The verdict brought a rush of warnings about the potential impact on fertility treatments and the freezing of embryos, which had previously been considered property by the courts.

Penny Blue, Virginia program director of Red, Wine and Blue, was one of ten children on a farm in rural Franklin County.

“I am certain, no doubt, that my mother loved each and every one of her children and loved the family she was able to build with my dad,” Blue said. “But, I also know that she cherished the decisions and control that her seven daughters and grandchildren had with regard to access to birth control.”

Virginia would join 13 other states and Washington DC, in establishing legal or constitutional protections for the right to contraception. Birth control, particularly hormonal birth control, is used to treat a variety of conditions, including premenstrual syndrome and polycystic ovarian syndrome and can reduce the risk of developing ovarian or endometrial cancer for people who are genetically high risk by 50%.

Youngkin offered amendments to another contraception bill that requires health insurance companies to include coverage for contraceptive drugs and devices. The proposed amendment ensures that non-governmental plan sponsors can deny contraception coverage on the grounds of sincerely held religious or moral beliefs.

The bill protects the use of oral contraceptives, long-acting reversible contraceptives such as intrauterine devices and hormonal contraceptive implants, emergency contraceptives, internal and external condoms, injectables, vaginal barrier methods, transdermal patches and vaginal rings.

“Governor Youngkin, the ball is in your court, and all eyes are on you,” Pickett said. “This is your moment to lead, to protect and to inspire.”

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“My mother loved the family she was able to build,” Blue said. “But she cherished the decision making and control her daughters and granddaughters had.”

“Now we’re trying to go back in time,” she said.

Red Wine and Blue collected over 37,000 signatures from Virginians to show how much support the issue has. But the governor’s amendment to another bill dealing with the ability of health insurers to deny contraception coverage may telegraph his disinterest in the matter. Senator Gazala Hashmi, who authored the senate version of the contraception protection bill, had a warning for Youngkin if he did veto the effort.

Read more at wvtf.org 

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Reed and Hashmi called on Youngkin to sign SB 237, which would codify access to and use of birth control medication, intrauterine devices (IUDs), condoms, and emergency contraceptive medication, also known as “Plan B.” Youngkin has until Monday to sign the bill, which passed in both chambers of Virginia’s General Assembly.

The conference was held with a small group of about 10 local community members and marked the final stop on Hashmi’s tour of three Virginia cities, having visited Richmond and Charlottesville earlier in the week. Penny Blue and Sarah Goodman, both from Red Wine and Blue, joined her on the tour.

Read more at dnronline.com

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During her address, Blue said “King did more than dream”, she said it’s important to teach children where they come from so they know where they’re going.”

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County meetings and social media were abuzz about the library for months after a conservative group asked the Warren County Board of Supervisors to defund it, replace the staff, and change the library’s operational structure when Samuels refused to remove about 140 LGBTQ-themed books.

After withholding 75 percent of the library’s budget while it worked to address concerns brought about by book challengers, supervisors released the money on Oct. 3, unanimously approving an operational agreement with the library.

Library supporters rejoiced at the agreement – which calls for continued funding, minor changes to the library’s board of trustees, and bi-annual reports to supervisors about the library’s finances.

Kelsey Lawrence, head of Save Samuels, a group that advocated for the library’s policies, said she is thrilled with the agreement, calling it a “testament to the strength of democracy.”

Saying that Save Samuels is “more than a movement; it’s a tight-knit community, even a family,” Lawrence said that the effort represented a first foray into politics for many of its members.

“For most of us, including myself, this journey into local politics has been enlightening, highlighting the importance of holding our local government accountable,” she said, noting that the group may broaden its mission “to protect more vital institutions” in the future. Library critics were furious about the agreement.

In an Oct. 5 email with the subject line “Et tu, Brute?”, Clean Up Samuels, the group that opposed the library’s book collection, structure, and funding, called the new agreement a betrayal of parents and taxpayers and a “dagger in the back.”

Read the complete article at nvdaily.com 

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VIRGINIA – Statewide nonprofits Red Wine & Blue and We the People For Education are launching a multi-city tour across Virginia starting Wednesday, October 4. Other partner organizations include Vote Mama, MomsRising, NextGen, and National Women’s Political Caucus VA.

The 6 stops on the “Parents, Not Politics” tour taking place throughout October include:

Roanoke County – October 4

Front Royal – October 5

Henrico/Chesterfield – October 12

Leesburg – October 14

Prince William County – October 16

Spotsylvania/Stafford – October 19 

Each “Parents Not Politics” event will feature candid and critical conversations between school board members and candidates, parents, and students about the ongoing threat of extremism on local school boards and how these efforts to push a radical, far-right agenda harms our children and undermines public education. 

Each stop will also offer Red Wine & Blue’s famed Troublemaker Trainings to give parents the tools and organizing network they need to make a measurable difference in their own school districts.

Parents, Not Politics will offer substantive discussions that bring communities together, a sharp contrast to Gov. Youngkin’s “Parents Matter” tour, which only served to highlight extreme political rhetoric and pit parents against educators.

“Mainstream parents do not want to be told how to raise their children by Glenn Youngkin or any other extremist politician in Richmond,” said Penny Blue, the Red Wine & Blue Virginia Program Director. “The stakes for public education and students in this election are clear. At the end of the day, Virginia parents want the freedom to parent and to work with their children’s teachers, principals and local school boards to help prepare their children for 2050—not be dragged back to 1950.”

“Our public schools are successful when teachers, parents, students and community members comes together to embrace common-sense solutions,” said Tiffany Van Der Hyde, the executive director of We the People for Education. “This tour is an opportunity to not only push back against the extremism we have seen trickling down from the Governor’s Office all the way to our own neighborhoods, but to show families across Virginia that there is a better way forward, and it starts by electing effective, pro-public education candidates to our school boards.”

The events will also address the ongoing efforts to impede our student’s freedom to learn and to feel safe, including banning books, attacking our most marginalized students, demonizing teachers, librarians and other educators, stoking fear in parents, dividing communities with extremist, dangerous rhetoric, and spreading damaging misinformation. 

Red Wine & Blue is an empowered community of half a million diverse women working together to defeat extremism, one friend at a time. They train and connect women across the country with a network of half a million suburban women of all political backgrounds – including many who have never been political before – to organize in their communities and address the growing threats of extremism to public education, reproductive freedom, and democracy.

We the People for Education is a Virginia-based nonprofit focused on recruiting, training and supporting common-sense school board leaders. By empowering reasonable, pro-public education community members to push back against divisiveness and extremism, we aim to bring teachers, parents, students and communities together to champion proven solutions to the real challenges our schools face. Learn more about our work and get involved at wethepeopleforeducation.org. 

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