ACLU-VA Women's Rights and Reproductive Freedom’s Portfolio

The ACLU of Virginia supports this bill because it combats gender bias, allowing women owned businesses equal opportunity for growth.

The ACLU of Virginia strongly opposes this bill. HB 1314 conflicts with the new federal rule that requires employers (with exemptions for religiously affiliated organizations) to provide health insurance coverage for contraception under the Affordable Care Act. It restricts access to contraception and other reproductive health services, limiting insurance coverage within the new state health care exchange under the Affordable Care Act, and, as such, violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. If this bill passed, however, and the federal rule is changed or set aside by the courts, Virginia will have in place a state law that will limit access to birth control and other reproductive health services. The ACLU of Virginia opposes this bill because it intends to discriminate against women and limit women’s access to basic health services. Requiring coverage of contraception does not violate the First Amendment. The ACLU of Virginia holds that at its core, religious freedom means that we are all free to make personal decisions based on our own beliefs and according to what is best for our health and the health of our families. It does not mean allowing particular religious groups to impose their religious beliefs and prohibitions on all of us.

HB 1315 conflicts with the new federal rule that requires employers (with exemptions for religiously affiliated organizations) to provide health insurance coverage for contraception under the Affordable Care Act. It restricts access to contraception and other reproductive health services, limiting insurance coverage within the new state health care exchange under the Affordable Care Act, and, as such, violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. If this bill passed, however, and the federal rule is changed or set aside by the courts, Virginia will have in place a state law that will limit access to birth control and other reproductive health services. The ACLU of Virginia opposes this bill because it intends to discriminate against women and limit women’s access to basic health services. Requiring coverage of contraception does not violate the First Amendment. The ACLU of Virginia holds that at its core, religious freedom means that we are all free to make personal decisions based on our own beliefs and according to what is best for our health and the health of our families. It does not mean allowing particular religious groups to impose their religious beliefs and prohibitions on all of us.

The ACLU-VA strongly opposes HB1316 because it reduces access to abortion services, invades women’s privacy, and threatens the confidentiality of the doctor/patient relationship. The bill intrudes into the reasons behind a woman’s personal decision to have an abortion. The bill forces doctors into becoming unwilling partners in this invasion. If lawmakers are concerned about the inequality of women and girls, they should support policies that actually work (such as pay equity or civil rights laws). The real intent of this bill is to limit abortions and this is a tactic to make abortion more difficult to access by threatening medical providers. Bans on abortion, like this one, that purport to address the issue of son preference, trade on racial stereotypes about Asian-American communities. However, Asian and Pacific Islander women already suffer from cultural and language barriers that make obtaining quality health care difficult. This bill does nothing to address those issues. In fact, it would only exacerbate racial disparities in reproductive health care by erecting new barriers between Asian and Pacific Islander women and health care providers. It would sow distrust between doctors and Asian and Pacific Islander women, reducing access to a broad range of critical care. Put simply, this bill will do nothing to end discrimination based on sex. Instead, it will force doctors and allow government officials to intrude upon women’s private family decisions. The hypocrisy of this so-called “anti-discrimination” bill is that it will not prevent sex-selection abortion, but will inevitably lead to racial profiling and force health care professionals to treat women of color as automatically suspect.

The ACLU of Virginia strongly opposes this bill. This bill attempts to allow a license to discriminate against women and limit women’s access to basic health services. Virtually every woman, ages 15-44, who is sexually active has used birth control at some point in her life. That includes 98 percent of Catholic women. In fact, contraception is the norm for religious women. This legislation is not about religious liberty at all, but about whether individuals should have access to comprehensive health insurance coverage, and most pointedly, whether women should have insurance coverage for contraception. Your boss’s morals should not be the arbiter of your health care access, just like employers should not be able to eschew minimum wage laws or other labor and employment protections out of moral opposition. Religious liberty means the right to hold to your beliefs, but not to impose them on others.

The ACLU of Virginia supports legislation that provides individuals forced into prostitution a legal defense to prosecution and expungement of records if convicted. Human trafficking of children and immigrants is a growing criminal enterprise and the victims of these crimes should not be treated as criminals by the justice system.

The ACLU of Virginia supports this bill because it compensates victims of the shameful practice of forced sterilization. Virginia’s legal sterilization program was enacted into law in 1924 – the same year the legislature adopted the Racial Integrity Act that prohibited interracial marriages. It is estimated that between 7,200 and 8,300 people were sterilized in Virginia from 1927-1979 because they were deemed by society at the time to be unworthy or unfit to procreate. In most cases, the individuals were “patients” at state mental institutions who were sent there because of alleged mental illness, physical deformity, “feeble-mindedness,” or simply because they were homeless. Twenty-two percent of the individuals sterilized were African Americans (about equal to the population in the state at the time) and two-thirds were women. Many of those sterilized were not even told they were being sterilized, but instead given some other explanation for their operation. We wholeheartedly support the effort to compensate victims of the state’s forced sterilization law.

The ACLU of Virginia supports legislation that provides individuals forced into prostitution a legal defense to prosecution and expungement of records if convicted. Human trafficking of children and immigrants is a growing criminal enterprise and the victims of these crimes should not be treated as criminals by the justice system.

The ACLU of Virginia supports this bill because it seeks to repeal the law passed in 2012 requiring that a woman undergo a transabdominal ultrasound prior to an abortion. Health care decisions are best made by individuals and their medical providers, not politicians. Patients should not be forced to undergo any procedure against their will or better judgment. Mandatory ultrasound puts
government into the examination room and lets politics come between a woman and her physician; curtails a woman’s constitutional rights to privacy and liberty by subjecting her to possibly unwanted and unnecessary medical procedures; place undue burdens on women seeking legal and safe abortion care; and is simply a delay tactic that imposes additional costs and prolongs a woman’s access to her abortion.

The ACLU of Virginia supports this bill because it seeks to repeal the law passed in 2012 requiring that a woman undergo a transabdominal ultrasound prior to an abortion. Health care decisions are best made by individuals and their medical providers, not politicians. Patients should not be forced to undergo any procedure against their will or better judgment. Mandatory ultrasound puts
government into the examination room and lets politics come between a woman and her physician; curtails a woman’s constitutional rights to privacy and liberty by subjecting her to possibly unwanted and unnecessary medical procedures; place undue burdens on women seeking legal and safe abortion care; and is simply a delay tactic that imposes additional costs and prolongs a woman’s access to her abortion.

The ACLU of Virginia supports this bill because health care decisions are best made by individuals and their medical providers, not politicians. Patients should not be forced to undergo any procedure against their will or better judgment. Mandatory ultrasound puts
government into the examination room and lets politics come between a woman and her physician; curtails a woman’s constitutional rights to privacy and liberty by subjecting her to possibly unwanted and unnecessary medical procedures; place undue burdens on women seeking legal and safe abortion care; and is simply a delay tactic that imposes additional costs and prolongs a woman’s access to her abortion.

The ACLU of Virginia supports this legislation that would define any minor who engages in prostitution as a child in need of assistance, and would allow any person accused of prostitution to offer as an affirmative defense that they were forced to participate in such activities. Human trafficking of children and immigrants is a growing criminal enterprise and the victims of these crimes should not be treated as criminals by the justice system.

The ACLU of VA supports this bill because it "grandfathers in" existing women's health care facilities that provide abortion care, rather than apply unnecessary and burdensome architectural requirements on to existing facilities, as is currently required under the ongoing process for new regulations of women's health care centers. Women’s health centers in Virginia have been providing safe, accessible, comprehensive reproductive health care for almost forty years. Abortion care is one of the safest surgical procedures available in the United States today. The new, proposed regulations for these centers single out the health care professionals who provide abortion care, and the patients who seek abortion care, for arbitrary and burdensome restrictions, that have nothing to do with the safe delivery of services for women and everything to do with legislators’ efforts to deny women access to reproductive health care. The proposed permanent new regulations for women's health centers require existing centers to come into compliance with three chapters of a manual called the 2010 Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities within the next two years. However, these Guidelines are intended to apply only to new construction, not to existing facilities, and this is how they are applied to every other health care facility in Virginia. These extensive, burdensome construction requirements have no relation to the safety of the services that women’s health centers provide.

The ACLU of Virginia supports this bill because it eliminates an anti-choice measure passed in the 2011 General Assembly session - the classification of women's health centers that provide first-trimester abortion as a category of hospital. Classifying women's health centers as a category of hospital subjects women's health centers to new regulations created by the Virginia Department of Health known as TRAP - Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers. First-trimester abortions remain one of the safest and most common of all in-office surgical procedures. Abortion should not be regulated differently than other outpatient procedures that do not trigger these kinds of strict regulations. Laws that target only abortion providers, such as the bill passed in 2011 that classifies women's health centers as a category of hospital, have nothing to do with the safe delivery of services for women and everything to do with legislators’ efforts to restrict access to reproductive healthcare. Women’s health centers that provide a full range of comprehensive health care services could close because of an inability to meet regulations that have nothing to do with women’s health and safety.

The ACLU of Virginia strongly supports this bill because it combats gender bias, allowing women owned businesses equal opportunity for growth.

The ACLU of Virginia strongly supports this bill because it combats gender bias, allowing women owned businesses equal opportunity for growth.

The ACLU of Virginia supports this bill because pay equity is critical to families’ economic security, and women who work full time still earn, on average, 77 cents for every dollar men earn. For African American women and Latinas, the numbers are even worse. In addition to ensuring employers do not discriminate on the basis of sex when providing benefits, this bill prohibits retaliation against workers who inquire about, discuss, share, or disclose information about the wages, benefits, or privileges of the employee or another employee, an important measure given the problem of some company policies prohibiting employees from telling colleagues about their salary and that the company can even fire them if they do so. However, to balance business’ need for confidentiality in some instances, the bill ensures that employees with access to such information of other employees as part of their essential job functions, such as human resources employees, may still be prohibited from sharing that information.

The ACLU of Virginia strongly opposes SB 826 because the bill repeals abortion funding for low-income women when a physician certifies in writing that the fetus has an incapacitating physical or mental anomaly. If SB 826 is approved, Medicaid-eligible women in Virginia will have no option for a pregnancy in which the fetus has an incapacitating physical or mental anomaly. Every woman’s situation is different and many things can go wrong in a pregnancy. No woman plans to have an abortion, but if she needs one, every woman deserves the opportunity to make the best decision for her circumstances. SB 826 places no restrictions on women who can afford to pay for their own abortion and would deny poor women access to safe care, for no other reason than their poverty. Women of Virginia should not be denied necessary healthcare based upon their ability to pay and health care decisions are best made by individuals and their medical providers. Leaving poor women without financial assistance for safe and sometimes critical care threatens their wellbeing. These Medicaid-eligible women are by definition very poor, and SB 826’s denial of care would exacerbate the crisis for those of them who decide they want to terminate the pregnancy. When a woman receives a catastrophic prenatal diagnosis, she should have the option that her wealthier counterparts enjoy to end the pregnancy safely and with dignity. This bill would force her to scramble for money she does not have, and therefore quite possibly carry to term. That is no way to treat a woman in a medical crisis. SB 826 places an undue burden on low-income women who already face decreased access to medical care. Instead of improving the health and safety of low-income women in Virginia, this bill removes another layer of health care from those already at risk.

The ACLU of Virginia supports this bill because it seeks to repeal the law passed in 2012 requiring that a woman undergo a transabdominal ultrasound prior to an abortion. Health care decisions are best made by individuals and their medical providers, not politicians. Patients should not be forced to undergo any procedure against their will or better judgment. Mandatory ultrasound puts
government into the examination room and lets politics come between a woman and her physician; curtails a woman’s constitutional rights to privacy and liberty by subjecting her to possibly unwanted and unnecessary medical procedures; place undue burdens on women seeking legal and safe abortion care; and is simply a delay tactic that imposes additional costs and prolongs a woman’s access to her abortion.

The ACLU of Virginia supports this bill because it seeks to repeal the law passed in 2012 requiring that a woman undergo a transabdominal ultrasound prior to an abortion. Health care decisions are best made by individuals and their medical providers, not politicians. Patients should not be forced to undergo any procedure against their will or better judgment. Mandatory ultrasound puts
government into the examination room and lets politics come between a woman and her physician; curtails a woman’s constitutional rights to privacy and liberty by subjecting her to possibly unwanted and unnecessary medical procedures; place undue burdens on women seeking legal and safe abortion care; and is simply a delay tactic that imposes additional costs and prolongs a woman’s access to her abortion.

The ACLU of Virginia supports this bill because it eliminates an anti-choice measure passed in the 2011 General Assembly session - the classification of women's health centers that provide first-trimester abortion as a category of hospital. Classifying women's health centers as a category of hospital subjects women's health centers to new regulations created by the Virginia Department of Health known as TRAP - Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers. First-trimester abortions remain one of the safest and most common of all in-office surgical procedures. Abortion should not be regulated differently than other outpatient procedures that do not trigger these kinds of strict regulations. Laws that target only abortion providers, such as the bill passed in 2011 that classifies women's health centers as a category of hospital, have nothing to do with the safe delivery of services for women and everything to do with legislators’ efforts to restrict access to reproductive healthcare. Women’s health centers that provide a full range of comprehensive health care services could close because of an inability to meet regulations that have nothing to do with women’s health and safety.

The ACLU of Virginia supports this bill because it "grandfathers in" existing women's health care facilities that provide abortion care, rather than apply unnecessary and burdensome architectural requirements on to exiting facilities, as is currently required under the ongoing process for new regulations of women's health care centers. Women’s health centers in Virginia have been providing safe, accessible, comprehensive reproductive health care for almost forty years. Abortion care is one of the safest surgical procedures available in the United States today. The new, proposed regulations for these centers single out the health care professionals who provide abortion care, and the patients who seek abortion care, for arbitrary and burdensome restrictions, that have nothing to do with the safe delivery of services for women and everything to do with legislators’ efforts to deny women access to reproductive health care. The proposed permanent new regulations for women's health centers require existing centers to come into compliance with three chapters of a manual called the 2010 Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities within the next two years. However, these Guidelines are intended to apply only to new construction, not to existing facilities, and this is how they are applied to every other health care facility in Virginia. These extensive, burdensome construction requirements have no relation to the safety of the services that women’s health centers provide.

The ACLU of Virginia supports legislation that provides individuals forced into prostitution a legal defense to prosecution and expungement of records if convicted. Human trafficking of children and immigrants is a growing criminal enterprise and the victims of these crimes should not be treated as criminals by the justice system.

The ACLU of Virginia supports this bill because it seeks to repeal the law passed in 2012 requiring that a woman undergo a transabdominal ultrasound prior to an abortion. Health care decisions are best made by individuals and their medical providers, not politicians. Patients should not be forced to undergo any procedure against their will or better judgment. Mandatory ultrasound puts
government into the examination room and lets politics come between a woman and her physician; curtails a woman’s constitutional rights to privacy and liberty by subjecting her to possibly unwanted and unnecessary medical procedures; place undue burdens on women seeking legal and safe abortion care; and is simply a delay tactic that imposes additional costs and prolongs a woman’s access to her abortion.