An OB-GYN Voter: What Virginia’s Legislative Elections Could Spell for 2024 on Abortion Rights
“I am a Republican, but I’m also a Christian,” said Pete Johnson, a voter in Henrico. It’s hard to put a week together. Limits on abortion. I’d rather we don’t have it at all.”
Dunnavant is a practicing OB-GYN. She agrees with Youngkin’s support for a 15-week limit on abortion if there are exceptions. She voted against a proposed bill earlier this year because it didn’t include an exception for fetal anomalies, which are often detected after 15 weeks.
“‘Ban’, if you look it up in the dictionary, means none, prohibited. “That is fearmongering language they’re using,” said Dunnavant.
Source: What Virginia’s legislative elections could spell for 2024 on abortion rights
What Virginia’s legislative elections could spell for 2024 on abortion rights: A spokeswoman for pro-abortion rights activists in Virginia
According to the CDC, 93 percent of abortions took place before 13 weeks, with six percent occurring between 14 and 20 weeks. Those with fetal anomalies and those who are rural are the most likely to be affected by a 15-week ban, according to abortion advocates.
Democrats have made abortion rights a centerpiece in their campaign. Democratic candidates mention abortion in more than 40% of their ads, as groups against new restrictions pour millions into ads according to advertising tracking firm Ad Impact.
“There will never be a vote to protect abortion access from the Republican party. He said at a canvassing event that there will be many votes to take it away.
“How often do you see someone’s rights just taken away from them, like the carpet pulled out from under your feet?” he told NPR while knocking doors in apartment complexes in his suburban district. There are Republicans in Virginia who are promising that.
She believes the Virginia Democrats have been very disciplined about not getting into the weeds. “Because for voters, there’s a fundamental freedom and right at stake here.”
Source: What Virginia’s legislative elections could spell for 2024 on abortion rights
What Do You Want to Know About the Gobbledygooks? The Case for Virginia’s General Assembly Speaker Glenn Youngkin
People are not very good at math or biology, which leads them to confusion about the 15 week ban and the six week ban. “People are like, ‘I don’t want to hear about all of this gobbledygook. I want to hear – do you support people’s fundamental freedom to make these healthcare decisions for themselves?’”
All 140 seats in Virginia’s General Assembly are on the ballot Tuesday, with the Democratic-leaning state’s relatively popular Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, hoping to capture the State Senate and secure total Republican control of Richmond. That would propel Mr. Youngkin to bigger and better things.
It’s not hard to tell if a man is checking the boxes of the voter Republicans are trying to target. She’s a young woman who votes in a swing area that traditionally tilts blue, but is personally against abortion.
The key battleground districts are where Lake thinks the Supreme Court will most likely mobilize.
“The very people that are the swing in these state legislative races are the very people who were most shocked by the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” she said, pointing to young, independent, and suburban women.
Voters will make a lot of decisions on Tuesday. Beyond abortion, the most watched initiative will be, again, in Ohio, where voters will decide whether cannabis should be legalized for recreational use. If voters agree, Ohio would become the 24th state to legalize marijuana. Pressure could be placed on Congress to ease the restrictions on interstate banking for legal cannabis businesses.
“This is not a referendum on Tuesday, that’s difficult to untangle,” Brian Robinson, a Republican public affairs consultant in Georgia said. This is an election for candidates who are willing to stand up for their beliefs.
I need convincing that this is a top priority for voters and that they will decide their vote on it. If there’s a similar case in Virginia, it could apply to Georgia and other swing states.
Virginia has become a sort of tempest check on national politics due to its racial and economic diversity. Voters and politicos are paying attention to the Old Dominion knowing it could be a preview for what’s to come in the 2024 elections.
An Analysis of Virginia Proposed Issue 1: Abortion, Other Reproductive Rights, and the Birth of a Pregared Child
“Bottom line is, I don’t think you, me, or any citizen will see a bait and switch if there are Republican majorities in both the House and Senate,” he said. Youngkin said 15 weeks. I think he’d take it to the bank.”
The Democrats were able to combat the image of the GOP being extreme on the issue in the mid-twenties because of his strategy. Youngkin had previously carried key areas that the Virginia Democrats won.
“We got work to do, we have to win the House, and we have to flip the Senate in Virginia, which is a key stop on our path to a majority in the legislature,” he said while campaigning for three candidates.
Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who won in an upset in 2021, is leading messaging around abortion for Virginia Republicans. They have adopted much of his position: a 15-week abortion ban, which includes exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.
Columbus area residents Beth and Kyle Long held hands as they walked into the Franklin County early voting center to cast their ballots for Issue 1, a proposed constitutional amendment that would enshrine abortion and other reproductive rights into the state’s constitution.
Beth, now 18 weeks pregnant after in vitro fertilization, is at the same point in her pregnancy as she was in January when she got an abortion after learning the fetus she was carrying had a fatal condition.
“The doctors came back and told us, ‘all of her organs, except her heart, are growing on the outside of her, enmeshed in the placenta,” she told NPR. There is nothing we could do to separate that. No fetus has ever survived this condition, and yours will not be the first.’”
The 2020 Ohio Abortion Amendment: Calling Secretary DeWine to Stop the Return of the Early Cardiovascular Activity Act, as Protest to the 2019 Ohio Supreme Court Case
The Longs were featured in an ad for Issue 1, one of many that have dominated the air waves in a contest that many view as a critical precursor to the 2024 elections.
Should the amendment pass, it could stop the return of a law that prohibits abortion at the point when fetal cardiac activity can be detected, as early as six weeks into pregnancy.
However, DeWine acknowledged many Ohioans disagree with the six-week abortion ban he signed in 2019, especially following last summer when it was in place for 82 days after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe.
The church, the body of Christ and pro-life activists will need to stand up and highlight how radical this abortion amendment is if we are going to win.
The amendment would repeal a state law that requires parental consent if a child under 18 wants to get an abortion, according to opponents of the amendment.
Katelin Hansen is a leader with the United Methodist Church in Columbus and she says that justice and care for the health of all people are her main focus.
Before 2016, Ohio was considered a bellwether, swing state. The Buckeye State has been ruled by the Republican Party since Donald Trump’s second term in office, which resulted in the control of statewide offices and the Ohio Supreme Court.
During that time, a ten-year-old rape victim went to Indiana for an abortion because she couldn’t get one in Ohio, which doesn’t allow abortions for rape and incest.
Although DeWine didn’t suggest adding those exceptions back in, he did promise voters as they headed to the polls that if they reject the amendment, he and other state leaders would come up with an exception for rape and incest.
In addition to the governor talking about possible adjustments to sway voters to the “no” side, Republicans at the Statehouse have taken other actions to try to defeat the amendment. Knowing abortion would be on the ballot in the fall, Republican lawmakers put a measure on a special August ballot to change the constitution to require a 60% threshold of passage for constitutional amendments rather than a simple majority. It did not succeed.
The original language of the amendment did not mention birth control and the word ‘fetus’ changed to ‘unborn child’.
The Ups and Downs of Secretary of State Frank LaRose: The Case for Prohibition of Abortion and Propagatorship in the November Election
Frank LaRose, Secretary of State, is a candidate in the Republican primary next year against Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown.
Recently, LaRose removed 27,000 voters from the rolls during the early voting period. Those who have moved, died or haven’t voted for years were stripped of their voter registration. Democrats called it a political move. They said LaRose removed voters without helping them reregister for the November election, which features two statewide issues he opposes: abortion rights and the legalization of marijuana.
The former chair of the Ohio Democratic Party, David Pepper, says he thinks the amendment on abortion rights will ultimately pass, but thinks propaganda and politics will make the vote tight.
“I think it’s closer overall because the amount of chatter that you hear about it being too much is having some impact,” Pepper says.
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Body Electric: Up First Briefing: 1 month since Hamas attacked Israel; Supreme Court Gun Control Case (with announcement)
One month ago today, Hamas militants attacked southern Israeli communities, killing more than 1,400 people and taking about 240 hostages. The Health Ministry in Gaza has reported that more than 10,000 people have been killed since the beginning of Israeli airstrikes. While the U.S. seeks a pause in the fighting to facilitate hostage releases, many Israelis support a prisoner swap.
The Supreme Court hears arguments today on whether a federal law banning firearms for people under domestic violence restraining orders is constitutional. State laws would face the same fate if the high court overturns the measure. A gun law needs to be like one that existed at the time of the nation’s founding in the 1700s in order to be constitutional.
WeWork, the co-working startup once valued at $47 billion, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company’s stock is down 99.2% from the beginning of the year, and dozens of locations are expected to close.
Body Electric is a six-part investigation and interactive project with TED Radio Hour host Manoush Zomorodi exploring the relationship between our technology and our bodies… and how we can improve it.
Zomorodi has examined several ways technology can affect our bodies for the past few weeks. More than 20,000 people are involved in an NPR/Columbia study trying to incorporate regular movement breaks into their day.
First Polls Close in Off-Year Election Watched for Hints About 2024: Why Do Libraries Matter? What Do They Mean to Help?
Book lovers can be kind to their pocketbooks by borrowing from the library. But libraries have a lot more to offer. There are a few ways libraries can help.
The results may determine whether Democrats find some reassurances on their approach to key issues like abortion, which was a bright spot for the party in a new New York Times/Siena poll that showed Donald J. Trump leading Mr. Biden in five critical swing states one year out.
Mr Youngkin is testing a compromise that national Republicans hope will be a winning message after so many party losses since the Supreme court overturned the constitutional right to abortion. The Democrats say that it is a ruse, but they have to overcome the unpopularity of Mr. Biden.
A similar dynamic is playing out in Kentucky, where Democrats have leaned heavily on the abortion issue, especially to tarnish the Republican challenger for governor, Daniel Cameron, who, as the current state attorney general, has had to defend Kentucky’s total abortion ban. The incumbent Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, who has a family name and moderate reputation that have insulated him from attacks that he is soft on crime and supports ‘radical’ trans rights, remains popular with the people of Kentucky.
Mississippi’s abortion ban brought down Roe v. Wade when the Supreme Court sided with Thomas E. Dobbs, Mississippi’s health officer, in Dobbs v. Jackson.
The Deep South state now faces a pitched battle for governor, but the candidates have not made abortion the central issue, since the incumbent Republican governor, Tate Reeves, and his Democratic challenger, Brandon Presley, both oppose it.
Instead, Mr. Presley’s surprisingly potent challenge has been fueled by a push to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and a public corruption scandal that saw the misspending of $94 million in federal funds intended for Mississippi’s poor on projects like a college volleyball facility pushed by the retired superstar quarterback Brett Favre.
Mr. Reeves fired an investigating attorney just after the lawyer issued a subpoena that could have given information regarding the involvement of prominent Mississippians.
Source: First Polls Close in Off-Year Election Watched for Hints About 2024
The Real Issue of Taxing the Wealth of Presley’s Millionaires: Implications for the Future of the Mississippi House of Representatives
In a debate this month, Mr. Presley said that he would sell his beachfront property in the northeast if he thought Tate Reeves would take on corruption.
But in Mississippi, Mr. Reeves has three advantages that could prove impenetrable: incumbency, the “R” next to his name on the ballot, and the endorsement of Mr. Trump, who won the state in 2020 by nearly 17 percentage points.
Texans will decide the fate of 14 constitutional amendments, including one that would bar the state from imposing a “wealth” tax, or a tax on the market value of assets owned but not sold. Taxing the wealth of billionaires is the only way to tap into their vast, untaxed wealth and it is supported by liberal activists as well as Democratic senators.