Virginia governor clears path for ‘extreme’ bill allowing police to seek menstrual histories
The Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, appears to have thwarted an attempt to stop law enforcement obtaining menstrual histories of women in the state.
A bill passed in the Democratic-led state senate, and supported by half the chamber’s Republicans, would have banned search warrants for menstrual data stored in tracking apps on mobile phones or other electronic devices.
Advocates feared private health information could be used in prosecutions for abortion law violations, after a US supreme court ruling last summer overturned federal protections for the procedure.
But Youngkin, who has pushed for a 15-week abortion ban to mirror similar measures in several Republican-controlled states, essentially killed the bill through a procedural move in a subcommittee of the Republican-controlled House.
“The Youngkin administration’s opposition to this commonsense privacy protection measure shows his real intentions, to ban abortion and criminalise patients and medical providers,” said Tarina Keene, executive director of Repro Rising Virginia, in a statement provided to the Guardian.
Youngkin has insisted that any abortion restrictions would target doctors, not women who have the procedure.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023...-histories
The Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, appears to have thwarted an attempt to stop law enforcement obtaining menstrual histories of women in the state.
A bill passed in the Democratic-led state senate, and supported by half the chamber’s Republicans, would have banned search warrants for menstrual data stored in tracking apps on mobile phones or other electronic devices.
Advocates feared private health information could be used in prosecutions for abortion law violations, after a US supreme court ruling last summer overturned federal protections for the procedure.
But Youngkin, who has pushed for a 15-week abortion ban to mirror similar measures in several Republican-controlled states, essentially killed the bill through a procedural move in a subcommittee of the Republican-controlled House.
“The Youngkin administration’s opposition to this commonsense privacy protection measure shows his real intentions, to ban abortion and criminalise patients and medical providers,” said Tarina Keene, executive director of Repro Rising Virginia, in a statement provided to the Guardian.
Youngkin has insisted that any abortion restrictions would target doctors, not women who have the procedure.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023...-histories
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"