{"id":920,"date":"2005-01-13T16:59:14","date_gmt":"2005-01-13T21:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/000af36.netsolhost.com\/wordpress1\/2005\/01\/13\/not_only_in_vir\/"},"modified":"2005-01-13T16:59:14","modified_gmt":"2005-01-13T21:59:14","slug":"not_only_in_vir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/2005\/01\/13\/not_only_in_vir\/","title":{"rendered":"Abortion Today, Contraception Tomorrow, Redux"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I thought I’d seen it all in 25 years of working with the General Assembly. We’ve seen numerous bills in recent years that would impact women’s access to contraception, unfortunately,” said Ben Greenberg, chief lobbyist for Planned Parenthood of Virginia. “This bill is probably just the latest and perhaps the most threatening and extreme of examples of legislation that would do that.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What he\u2019s talking about is HB1918<\/a>, which would decree that life begins at fertilization<\/a>, introduced by Mark Cole (R-Frederickburg).<\/p>\n

\nGreenberg said a number of popular birth control methods–the Pill, Depo Provera, the morning-after pill–all can potentially act after fertilization has occurred. Cole’s bill could prevent access to all those types of birth control.<\/p>\n

“The only thing that would be available on the market, if these methods of contraception were made illegal, would be the barrier methods,” Greenberg said. “Condom manufacturers should be very excited by this legislation.”<\/p>\n

Greenberg said the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that couples do have the right to access birth control. <\/p>\n

However, that hasn’t stopped some lawmakers–in Virginia and elsewhere–from trying to blur the line between abortion and contraception, Greenberg said.<\/p>\n

For that reason, there is a bill in the U.S. Senate right now that would define what is contraception and clarify that it is not abortion.<\/p>\n

“People have a hard time believing that our General Assembly could be hostile to birth control,” Greenberg said. “But this is another example of that fact. Hostility toward abortion has been documented for many years. The hostility toward birth control is of more recent vintage, and is evidenced by bills over the past three to four years, this being just the latest and most threatening example of them. It seem to me the women of Virginia should be outraged by this.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cole’s bill has been referred to the House Privileges and Elections Committee, which is not the usual repository of bills relating to reproduction. However, Cole’s bill makes reference to the state constitution in a way that could put it in that panel’s purview.<\/p>\n

I think it better to refer this bill to the circular file. Thanks to a new blog<\/a> \u2013 and PAC \u2013 called Virginia Family Values PAC for pointing this bill out. It\u2019s not<\/a> what the name might lead you to think.<\/p>\n

Others are also assaulting contraception<\/a> through funding measures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I thought I’d seen it all in 25 years of working with the General Assembly. We’ve seen numerous bills in recent years that would impact women’s access to contraception, unfortunately,” said Ben Greenberg, chief lobbyist for Planned Parenthood of Virginia. “This bill is probably just the latest and perhaps the most threatening and extreme of… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}