See below for video from this morning – the day after World Contraception Day – as Virginia state legislators, advocates and impacted Virginians sounded the alarm: “our right to contraception is at stake in this election.” Among the speakers on the call were Virginia Senate Democratic Caucus Chair Mamie Locke, as well as Chair of the Virginia Senate Education and Health Committee, Ghazala Hashmi; Jamie Lockhart, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia; Walewska Watkins, Contraception storyteller; and Olivia Reposa, Contraception storyteller.
This was an excellent call in general, but I just wanted to highlights the comments by VA Senate Democratic Caucus Leader Mamie Locke – she was on fire!
“I’ve been in politics long enough to know exactly what kind of people the Republicans have fielded this year as their candidates. Certainly, at the very top of this ticket is Donald Trump, who said there were good people on both sides when actual Nazis rallied in Charlottesville in 2017. And he’s proud to have been responsible for the single biggest hit on reproductive rights when he stacked the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade with the Dobbs decision.
Right beneath him is Hung Cao, who calls rural Virginia ‘podunk’ and says that protecting reproductive rights like contraception is just fear-mongering. Like Jen Kiggans, he would not even give a clear answer when asked by The Virginian Pilot if he would vote for the Right to Contraception Act. What he pretends not to remember is that MAGA extremists also gaslit us to believe Roe was not truly under threat. But look what happened when they finally took control of the Supreme Court – Roe v Wade was overturned.
And right under him is my former colleague in the Senate, Jen Kiggans. And I know Jen Kiggans – she’s so extreme, she voted against a bill in 2020 that would have simply said that birth control is not abortion – it was one of the simplest bills that year, that would have made that clarifying language, and she voted no. Why? Because she is a MAGA extremist who disguises herself as a moderate. This is who they are, and we need to believe them by their words and their actions, not by their political maneuvering to avoid being called out for wanting to take away our rights…And that’s why to have to elect Kamala Harris for president reelect Tim Kaine to the US Senate, and elect Missy Cotter Smasal to Conress in the 2nd district this November.”
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