Last year, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam revealed how he is perfectly fine with killing babies in infanticide. Today he signed a bill that repeals virtually every major pro-life law saving babies from abortions.
Northam announced he signed the Reproductive Health Protection Act, repealing laws designed to protect unborn children and provide with with informed consent, to ensure abortion centers follow basic health and safety rules. In his signing message, Northam made a sexist claim — attacking men just because they support protecting women and unborn children.
“No more will legislators in Richmond—most of whom are men—be telling women what they should and should not be doing with their bodies,” said Governor Northam. “The Reproductive Health Protection Act will make women and families safer, and I’m proud to sign it into law.”
The bills Northam signed repeal informed consent requirements for abortions and allow non-doctors to do them. They repeal the state Women’s Right to Know law, which ensured women were offered facts about their pregnancies, abortion risks and alternatives, and allowed to see an ultrasound of their unborn child. It also informed women of their legal rights and required a 24-hour waiting period before the abortion.
The bill ends Virginia’s requirement that a licensed doctor perform abortions and allows less trained medical workers to abort unborn babies. It also eliminates informed consent requirements, including making sure a woman knows that she “may withdraw her consent at any time prior to” the abortion. Under the legislation, abortion facilities also no longer will be required to offer women the chance to see the ultrasound of their unborn baby or hear the baby’s heartbeat.
The legislation also repeals basic health and safety requirements for abortion facilities and removes civil penalties for abortionists who fail to properly inform or treat patients.
Leading pro-life groups condemned the legislation and how the legislature approved it.
“The effect of this action today is to provide more cover to unscrupulous abortionists who profit from keeping women in the dark about their bodies and their babies,” said Olivia Gans Turner, president of the Virginia Society for Human Life. “The abortion industry and its allies in Virginia will be the only ones to benefit from this vote.”
Gans Turner knows the abortion industry’s manipulation all too well. She aborted an unborn baby in college after abortionists told her repeatedly that she would be foolish and immature not to. She said experiences like hers are exactly why informed consent requirements are important.
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“Democrat pro-abortion supporters lied about why the bill was supposedly needed and what it will do,” Gans Turner said. “Women who have had abortions testified then and now before the General Assembly that abortionists do not give women these facts.”
Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia, described the legislation as “Planned Parenthood’s wish list.”
“[The vote] sends a clear message to mothers who are contemplating having an abortion – that political agendas, convenience and profit are more important than their health and safety,” Cobb said.
She said abortion activists used to demand that abortions be legal to protect women from dangerous “back alley” abortions.
“But in eliminating all health and safety regulations, the abortion industry only puts mothers having an abortion at greater risk of harm, affirming what we’ve known all along – the abortion industry doesn’t care about women’s safety, only profit,” Cobb said.
Meanwhile, the billion-dollar abortion chain Planned Parenthood rejoiced after the votes.
“When this legislation goes into effect, Virginians will no longer have to navigate an obstacle course of delays and barriers in order to access a safe and legal abortion,” said Jamie Lockhart, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia.
Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups have dumped millions of dollars into Virginia politics in the past several years, bringing pro-abortion Democrats into power. Infamously, in 2019, Gov. Northam went so far as to support infanticide for infants who survive abortions.
But grassroots Virginians are taking a stand against this extremism. Earlier this year, thousands of pro-lifers in the state marched in the rain in Richmond, urging lawmakers to protect unborn babies and mothers from abortion.
