It's Veto Time in Richmond
Virginia’s Republican governor Glenn Youngkin has vetoed 153 of the 1,046 bills passed by Virginia’s General Assembly this year – almost 15% -- to set a record. He vetoed more bills in one year than any other modern Virginia governor vetoed in his four-year term.
This was not unexpected – Governor Youngkin faced a fired-up General Assembly where both houses are controlled by Democrats after the GOP position on abortion lost the 2023 election cycle. Because they are not very quick learners, the state GOP continues to fight the abortion wars.
Youngkin took two actions this week with regard to abortion:
He vetoed a bill that would have helped protect women and medical practitioners from potential extraditions related to abortion services that are legal in Virginia. Because some women in states with abortion bans increasingly must travel elsewhere to terminate a pregnancy, the anti-extradition measure vetoed by Youngkin would have protected Virginians from being involved in other states’ criminal prosecutions. According to Youngkin, the United States “cooperative extradition system could collapse if individual states were to carve out crimes for which they would not recognize codified laws because of differing political positions.”
He also vetoed a bill that would have prohibited state regulators from taking disciplinary action against doctors for abortion care that’s legal in Virginia, “regardless of where such abortion care was provided or received.” Youngkin said that the bill would open the door “to a resurgence of unsafe, risky abortions occurring outside of clinical settings, and it places any unprofessional behavior during an abortion outside the Board’s jurisdiction for disciplinary action.”
In an action that was a surprise to some observers, the governor signed separate legislation, which is supported by abortion rights groups, that prohibits the issuance of search warrants, subpoenas, or court orders for electronic or digital menstrual health data. This bill was opposed by almost all Republicans in the General Assembly.
This is just a snippet of the important things that are happening in the Virginia state legislature. Because Virginians voted “blue” in November of 2023, women’s reproductive rights are relatively safer in Virginia than they would have been if the GOP had taken over the General Assembly.
Voting in every election matters.