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NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia Foundation

Pro-Choice License Plate signed into law, Medicaid budget amendment puts women's health and freedom at risk

RICHMOND, VA- NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia receives Governor McDonnell's legislative decisions today with mixed emotions. First, we celebrate the signing of the "Trust Women, Respect Choice" license plate which will soon grace cars across the Commonwealth. While the license plate was met with contentious, partisan debate in the House of Delegates, and after a promised First Amendment lawsuit by our ACLU allies, the license plate prevailed. We appreciate the governor's thoughtful deliberation and his decision to give pro-choice Virginians their own license plate which reflects their values.

However, it is with much consternation that NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia greets the governor's budget amendment which slashes Medicaid funding, leaving low-income women with no options when faced with a pregnancy that is abnormal or terminal.

"Today's news is bittersweet. Our hard fought effort to give Virginia's pro-choice majority an opportunity to display its values along with others in the Commonwealth on personal license plates is certainly something to celebrate. But along side this victory, the governor has again chosen to further marginalize Virginia's most vulnerable women by denying Medicaid recipients a long held right to end pregnancies when fetal anomaly or demise is imminent. This trounces privacy and annihilates poor women. All women should have access to reproductive healthcare regardless of their economic status. We wish for once that Governor McDonnell and anti-choicers would try and put themselves in the shoes of women facing this sort of tragedy," said Executive Director Tarina Keene.

Keene continued, "At a time when so many women in Virginia are hit hard by job losses and lack of healthcare, the legislature should focus on ways to improve women's access to birth control and annual lifesaving exams--which they refuse to do. In the end, it is low-income women who are the losers in what has become an ideological, political debate."