Category Archives: Abortion

Virginia Democrats Have New Tourism Twist

Posted on May 31, 2023 by | 10 comments

by Olivia Gans Turner

Recently North Carolina passed a bill to prevent abortions after 12 weeks. This new law may save many lives in North Carolina, but most abortions actually happen earlier, in the first weeks of pregnancy.

Now Virginia Democrats are announcing their intention to make Virginia a destination state for abortions. In the upcoming 2023 elections they must hold the Senate and gain the House of Delegates in order to turn Virginia into a place where unlimited abortions are available and paid for with our taxes.

It is tragic that the Democrats in Virginia are prepared to make Virginia a destination state for abortions-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy. It is infuriating that they have opposed every rational bill that has come out of the House of Delegates during the past two General Assembly sessions. They have even announced their desire to enshrine a permanent, unrestricted “Right to Abortion” into the Virginia Constitution.

In polling done earlier this year by McLaughlin and Associates, 70 percent of respondents stated that abortion should only be legal under very limited circumstances, including the life of the mother or rape and incest, with reporting. Less than 5 percent of abortions are done in the U.S. for those reasons. Another 60 percent oppose using tax dollars to fund abortions.

Pro-life Republicans are committed to passing reasonable laws on abortion, including the bill to protect unborn babies who can feel pain and a bill to provide medical care to babies who survive an abortion. Radical pro-abortion members of the Virginia Senate, led by Sen Louise Lucas, blocked every rational pro-life bill that came out of the House of Delegates.

Virginia Democrats are way out of step with most Virginians and are only committed to the abortion groups that fund so many of them. Abortion with no limits does not help women and it kills their babies. It is not good medicine or real health care. Tragically, it is big business in Virginia now.

It is up to Virginia voters to stop this dangerous agenda.

Olivia Gans Turner directs American Victims of Abortion (AVA), an outreach project of the National Right to Life Committee. This column was originally posted in The Republican Standard. It is reprinted here with permission.

10 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Culture wars, General Assembly, Politics, Uncategorized, Virginia Law

The Abortion Hypocrisy

Posted on May 20, 2023 by | 115 comments

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

Republicans are hypocrites when it comes to abortion.

They base their opposition to abortion on the belief that a fetus is  a human being and killing an innocent human being is wrong. Hence, the term “pro-life.”  (This is a position on which I happen to agree with them.)

But are they pushing for an absolute ban on abortion, perhaps with exceptions for rape, incest, and the health of the mother?  Nope.  It seems they are settling on banning abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy.  They are justifying this by calling it “mainstream” and “not extreme”.

Excuse me, but why is a 13-week-old fetus worthy of protection that is not accorded a 12-week-old fetus?  Is one “more of a human” than the other?

Then there is our Governor, Glenn Youngkin.  He is pushing for banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. As I have pointed out before, that limit is not going to prevent many abortions in Virginia.  According to the CDC, only 2.2 percent of abortions in Virginia in 2020 were performed after the 15th week.  If Youngkin were truly interested in protecting unborn babies, rather than playing politics, he would push for a near total ban on abortion.

Sorry, Republicans, you can’t have it both ways.  A fetus is either a human at conception or it is not.  If it is, then what is the basis for deeming fetuses more than 13 weeks old qualitatively different from those 12 weeks or less old?  If it is not a human at conception, they why ban abortions at all?

If you believe that abortion is wrong because there is a human life involved, then push for a total ban, with some limited exceptions.  Otherwise, you are just being political hypocrites.

I don’t agree with Democrats on this issue, but at least they are being honest about their position.

115 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Culture wars

Tagged

Virginia’s Abortion Laws

Posted on May 8, 2023 by | 32 comments

Credit pxhere.com

by James C. Sherlock

Politicians on the right and left proclaim they want to change Virginia’s abortion laws.

It is thus a useful exercise to see how those laws actually read. I am not an attorney, but I will take a shot at summarizing at certain points.

The reference is Code of Virginia Title 18.2 Crimes and Offenses Generally, Chapter 4. Crimes Against the Person, Article 9. Abortion. Go directly to it at the link if you wish to see the entirety of that Article.

There are nine active sections of Article 9.

We will take them individually, see how they read and point out later some of what they do not address. Continue reading →

32 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Virginia Law

Tagged

Youngkin Pumping The Presidential Brakes

Posted on April 17, 2023 by | 31 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Looks like Gov. Glenn Youngkin may have some natural immunity to the presidential virus that seems to infect most Virginia governors.

At one time or another it seems almost every Virginia governor has his head turned by the seductive intoxication of presidential or vice presidential ambition.

Anyone else remember L. Douglas Wilder? He was elected governor in 1989 and his term ran from 1990 to 1994. By 1992, he was running for president as a Democrat, although Wilder dropped out before the primaries got underway.

In 2010, Gov. Bob McDonnell was selected to give the GOP rebuttal to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address, a sign that he was being groomed by the national party for higher office, perhaps vice president in 2012. In fact, when Sen. Mitt Romney came to Norfolk that year to announce his choice for veep, many assumed it was going to be the popular Virginia governor from Virginia Beach.

Instead, it was a head fake. Romney chose the USS Wisconsin as a backdrop to make his surprise announcement of Rep. Paul Ryan, from the Badger State’s 1st congressional district.

At various times during their 4-year terms former Governors George Allen, Jim Gilmore, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine also were mentioned as top contenders for their party’s presidential ticket. In fact, Kaine ran with Hillary Clinton in 2016. Mike Pence filleted him in the single vice presidential debate, however. Kaine was virtually invisible for the rest of the campaign.

There have been signs for weeks that, although he clearly flirted with the notion of running for president, Youngkin was pulling back. For instance, in the past couple of months several of his top political consultants, Jeff Roe and Kristin Davison, departed to join a DeSantis super-PAC.

Well, once The New York Times weighs in, it must be official. Youngkin is tapping the “brakes” as The Times wrote this weekend in a piece headlined “Youngkin Gives 2024 Presidential Run the Cold Shoulder.” Continue reading →

31 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Elections, Leadership

Tagged

Five Questions: An Interview with Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears

Posted on April 11, 2023 by | 108 comments

by Shaun Kenney

Last week, The Republican Standard had the opportunity to follow Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears as she toured the Richmond Slave Trail — which included not only the site of the notorious Lumpkins Slave Jail but also the site where Gabriel Prosser was executed and presumably buried in 1800.

Winsome Earle-Sears brought a narrative rooted in the role of hope in human liberation, whether it was in her own tradition from Jamaica to the hopelessness that seems to infect so much of our political discourse today. TRS was able to sit down with the Lieutenant Governor in order to explore her thoughts on this topic and many others.

We just toured Lumpkin’s Slave Jail site. Clearly this is a place with a lot of hurt and anguish, but a little bit of courage and heroism. Where do you think that resilience — that hope — comes from given the experiences of the past?

People look at me and think that I have courage, but I don’t. I have no special store of courage more than the next guy, but I have counted the cost and what I say and do comes with consequences.
There are times when people believe that I am not willing to take that stand, but God comes along and tells me to pick up my cross. Many people attribute that to me being a Marine, but it is really not: it is attributable to my Christian Faith.
Continue reading →

108 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Business and Economy, Children and families, Civil Rights, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Demographics, Education (K-12), Elections, Feminism and women's rights, Freedom, Immigration, Individual liberties, Political Influence, Politics, Race and race relations, Uncategorized

Tagged

A Killer Strategy

Posted on March 28, 2023 by | 171 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Democrats in Virginia and nationally plan to ride abortion to victory in elections as far as the eye can see.

The herald of this strategy was a piece in New York Magazine by Rebecca Traister.  It was titled, unsubtly, “Abortion Wins Elections.”

She is probably right, if her positions are presented in a softened way.

She is right if progressives can set the terms of the debate and avoid the hard questions which the press will try feverishly to help them bury.

But I hand it to her. She is straightforward. She advocates boundless abortions. In that she is probably making the wrong bet.

In the progressive vision:

  • There are no fathers, no husbands in the brave new world. Reproductive choice does not apply to men;
  • Babies don’t exist until the moment of birth. Some would like the opportunity to take a look after birth — about which Dr. Northam spoke — before deciding;
  • They insist on tax money — from everyone — paying the bills.

The far right counters the left’s list of demands with its own. No abortions ever, under any circumstances.

I suspect Virginians are unprepared to go to either extreme. But there are questions directly applicable to Virginia politics.

  • Will abortion drive education and parents rights from the front of Virginia voters’ minds?
  • Will killing — sorry — terminating babies prove more important to voters than how the survivors are raised and educated?

In either case, it will be about children.

Who don’t get a vote. Continue reading →

171 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Children and families, Culture wars, Elections, Politics

Tagged

Hokies, Join the Resistance!

Posted on January 19, 2023 by | 58 comments

From Campus Reform:

Virginia Tech prof accuses student of spreading misinformation, threatens to delete discussion board posts

A pro-life student at Virginia Tech was publicly accused of spreading misinformation by her professor after submitting a discussion board assignment expressing pro-life views.

After being admonished publicly, student Alyssa Jones met with her professor and recorded the conversation. “I hadn’t really been thinking the way you want me to I guess,” she said. “I didn’t say anything that was factually incorrect in my discussion post, and I’m just a little bit confused as to why you told the class that I was spreading misinformation.”

Bacon’s bottom line: Push back. Document everything. And take your case public. Students, there are people who will help you,

By the way, Hokie alumni, where the heck are you? You’ve got the most politically conservative (or least “progressive”) students among the major Virginia universities. Why aren’t you standing up for them? Join the University of Virginia, Virginia Military Institute, James Madison University, and Washington & Lee in forming an alumni resistance group. We’re happy to help. Contact me at jabacon@thejeffersoncouncil.com.

— JAB

58 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Culture wars, Education (higher ed)

Tagged

Abortions in Virginia – Data for the Debate

Posted on September 19, 2022 by | 64 comments

Fetus – 15 weeks
Credit pregnancy health.net

by James C. Sherlock

With all of the controversy, it is useful to know the facts of what has been happening with abortions in Virginia.

The Centers for Disease Control conducts abortion surveillance to document the number and characteristics of women obtaining legal induced abortions and the number of abortion-related deaths in the United States.

The last CDC annual abortion surveillance report was for 2019.

It provides useful reference material inasmuch as several of its data tables are broken out by state. I have chosen four: number, age of mother, race/ethnicity and known weeks of gestation.

Three things of note:

  1. In Virginia, there were 160 abortions for every 1,000 live births.
  2. As a percentage of abortions, Virginia women have late-term (after 15 weeks) abortions at only about half the rate as women nationally. In Virginia, 2.5% occurred after 15 weeks of gestation — 0.6% after 20 weeks.
  3. As for race, it is instructive to see that abortion has not strayed far from its American eugenicist roots.  It was sterilization at the beginning.  Now it is abortion.  Black babies are still killed at a  disproportionately high rate. But strange differences today are:
    • Black executives now largely run Planned Parenthood; and
    • Much of the Black press and clergy have joined the hallelujah chorus in support of abortion.

Continue reading →

64 Comments

Posted in Abortion

Tagged

Blue Ridge Pregnancy Center Targeted in June Attack

Posted on August 17, 2022 by | 15 comments

by Scott Dreyer

According to the Catholic New Agency’s “Tracker: Pro-abortion attacks in the U.S. continue,” there have been over 90 attacks on crisis pregnancy centers, churches, and other pro-life targets since May 2022. That was when the draft opinion in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Mississippi Dobbs case was leaked to the public. To date, not one attacker or vandal involved in these hate crimes has been sent to jail for these acts.

The first attack after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the abortion issue to the states as had been the case until 1973 came on June 25, 2022, less than one day after the high court has issued its landmark decision. That first target was the Blue Ridge Pregnancy Center in Lynchburg. Continue reading →

15 Comments

Posted in Abortion

Tagged

Twofers, Threefers

Posted on July 16, 2022 by | 185 comments

If this clump of cells has achieved “personhood” the legal implications are endless.

by Jim McCarthy

As time passes, it seems a safe bet to conclude that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v Jackson will be deemed an upheaval to American culture and politics greater than that of Brown v Board of Education. 

Dobbs may have unleashed a kraken-worthy pandemic of civic monsters to rival that of Greek mythology. The decision is drawing embryonic and heated demands for a national absolute ban on abortions based upon a theory of “life at conception,” or fetal personhood, that augurs to redefine and upend well-settled related public policy and laws. The tumult emerging from Dobbs will make the half-century precedent of Roe seem peaceful.

Thirteen states have already adopted laws to ban all or most abortions, with eight protecting the fetus from the moment of conception without conferring personhood. However, Louisiana is presently considering legislation requiring the state to “fully recognize the human personhood of an unborn child at all stages of development prior to birth from the moment of fertilization.” Life at conception is sufficiently close – theologically and legally – to fetal personhood as to be only finely distinguishable.

The Commonwealth’s political leadership, for the moment, appears not to be poised to mimic Louisiana, but Old Dominion advocates are not hiding their aspirations for a “no compromise” ban on abortion as the state’s rule. Continue reading →

185 Comments

Posted in Abortion

Tagged

Virginia Jews and Their Differing Views on Abortion – Don’t Ask Public Radio

Posted on July 5, 2022 by | 50 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Another day, and more intentionally misleading headlines in Virginia. This one from Radio IQ, written by Sandy Hausman.

Jewish community leaders will fight attempts to restrict abortion in Virginia

From the text.

Delegate Eileen Filler-Corn, the only Jewish woman in the General Assembly, organized an online gathering to discuss her religion’s view of abortion and of efforts by Governor Youngkin and his political allies to further restrict access. (emphasis added.)

Falls Church Rabbi Amy Schwartzman said amen.

“It is truly an outrage that women are being stripped of their fundamental right to make essential healthcare decisions free of governmental interference. Pregnant individuals must be able to make ethical decisions based on their own beliefs and medical best interests without government officials imposing their personal religious views on others,” she asserted. “It is devastating to hear our governor has aligned himself with the court’s religious authoritarians in denying freedom of religion for not only the Jewish community but for all of those whose beliefs allow pregnant individuals their full rights.”  (emphasis added.)

Continue reading →

50 Comments

Posted in Abortion

Tagged

The Abortion Hypocrisy of Glenn Youngkin

Posted on July 5, 2022 by | 82 comments

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

Governor Youngkin recently told a forum organized by The Family Foundation that life begins at conception. I agree with that statement.

He went on to say that he wanted to “protect life.” However, he said that he would be willing to settle for a bill that prohibits abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

According to the CDC, there were 15,582 abortions in Virginia in 2019, the latest year for which there is data. (If the abortion data is included on the Virginia Department of Health website, it is well hidden.) Of that number, only 90 (less than one percent) were performed after the 20th week of pregnancy. If life begins at conception, as the Governor says he believes, why aren’t those almost 15,500 lives that were aborted (killed) before the 21st week of pregnancy as valuable as the 90 lives that would have been spared under the Governor’s policy? Continue reading →

82 Comments

Posted in Abortion, General Assembly, Politics

Tagged

Impact of Supremes’ Roe v. Wade Ruling Way Overstated

Posted on June 30, 2022 by | 151 comments

Photo credit: Netblogpro

by Ken Reid

Should Governor Glenn Youngkin succeed in getting the Virginia General Assembly to curb abortion in Virginia from 25 weeks of pregnancy (at present) to 15, some 97% of abortions will still be protected, according to 2019 stats from the  Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

In addition, in six of the eight states which had pre-Roe v. Wade abortion bans, which have now become law again, an overwhelming majority of abortions will continue because abortion drugs (like Mifeprex – generic, mifepristone) –- cannot be outlawed. The only state with a trigger law where only 39% of abortions would continue is Missouri, based on data from the CDC.

In two states, Ohio and Texas, which have enacted restrictions after six weeks of pregnancy, CDC data indicates abortion through Mifeprex could conceivably cover 62% and 80% of abortions in those states, respectively.

About 54% of all abortions in 2019 were by abortion drugs, not surgery. Not all 1st trimester abortions can be done via drug, but the numbers are increasing and I will explain shortly why the states can do little about it.

I covered the drug and device industry for the trade press for 35 years, so I have some expertise here. Since the Supreme Court overturn of Roe was leaked in early May, I have written several articles, including a letter in The Washington Post,  about how this decision is really a wash for both sides – but these facts have not entered the news cycle or TV punditry. You can read one of these articles here.

Here are my arguments: Continue reading →

151 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Civil Rights, Courts and law

Tagged

Prosecutors Who Won’t Do Their Jobs

Posted on June 30, 2022 by | 15 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Two local prosecutors just earned an A in both Fearmongering 101 and Grandstanding 101.

Ramon Fatehi of Norfolk and Stephanie Morales of Portsmouth used the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe V Wade to summon the press and draw attention to, well, themselves.

The duo pronounced themselves “horrified” that the highest court would allow states to pass their own abortion laws — let’s give them each an F in Federalism 101 — and used the court decision to declare that they would not prosecute abortion crimes if the General Assembly passes new laws.

“Prosecuting those cases is directly contrary to my responsibility to keep people here in Norfolk safe and alive and I simply will not — I won’t allow the Republicans’ extremist agenda to put blood on my hands,” Fatehi told The Virginian-Pilot. “I will not aid and abet their endangering of people who are pregnant and who seek to end their pregnancies.”

Love the way this woke prosector used the idiotic “people who are pregnant” descriptor when he could have said “women.” Guess he’s seeking the men-can-have-babies vote in the next election. And his mention of keeping Norfolkians “alive” is rich in irony, given the topic. Continue reading →

15 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Crime , corrections and law enforcement

Tagged

Virginia Law, Abortion, Expectant Mothers and Medical Professionals

Posted on June 30, 2022 by | 41 comments

by James C. Sherlock

To clarify for those who misunderstand or knowingly misrepresent the statements of Republican leaders in the General Assembly concerning a new law on abortion, a woman aborting her unborn child is not proposed to be the subject of legal sanctions.

The targets in the mainstream Republican proposals being developed for a new abortion law will be the licenses of those performing the procedure.

Under current Virginia state law, abortion is legal in the first and second trimesters, or up to 26 weeks of pregnancy. It is allowed in the third trimester only if the woman’s life or mental or physical health is in danger.

Governor Youngkin told The Washington Post he would like the cutoff to be 15 or 20 weeks. He told the Post that he would support exceptions for rape, incest and when the mother’s life is in danger.

He has asked state senators Siobhan Dunnavant, R-Henrico, and Steve Newman, R-Forest, and delegates Kathy Byron, R-Lynchburg, and Margaret Ransone, R-Kinsale, to craft the legislation.

Dr. Siobhan Dunnavant, MD is an Obstetrics & Gynecology Specialist in Richmond. Senator Newman, R-Lynchburg, said in an interview with WTOP radio:

The state licensing process is most likely the best way to go about enforcement.

Indeed, it is the only politically viable way. Continue reading →

41 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Courts and law

Tagged