Trying to reignite the push to pass the Equal Rights Amendment in the Virginia General Assembly, Fairfax’s Delegate Kaye Kory relies on extraordinarily incorrect facts and figures about women incarceration.
Proposed House Rules Change is ‘Proxy Fight for Unrestricted Access to Abortion’ Says Del. Scott Garrett
With a rules fight looming in Virginia’s House of Delegates, one lawmaker took to the floor on Monday to push back against an effort which he called a “proxy fight for unrestricted access to abortion.”
Delegate Scott Garrett (R-Lynchburg), rose against a Friday effort championed by colleague Hala Ayala (D-Woodbridge) to change chamber rules and revive a failed measure hailed by abortion advocates to require taxpayer funding for unrestricted access to taxpayer funded abortion.
Ayala’s effort to suspend the rules and advance the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the floor, following its repeated failures in committee, would constitute an unprecedented effort to discharge the committee system under which the chamber operates, targeted towards one specific measure.
“We already know, Mr. Speaker, that the 14th Amendment the United States Constitution applies the equal protection of the laws to all people regardless of sex,” said Garrett. “What could this additional amendment really be about, Mr. Speaker?”
“The next few days will give us the opportunity to answer that question by saying out loud what this has been about all along: a proxy fight on unrestricted access to abortion. I think we’re all well aware of the shock and outrage that emerged not only across the Commonwealth but across the country, after the details of House bill 2491 became widely known. That legislation, Mr. Speaker, erased all meaningful restrictions on late term abortion, allowing abortion up to the moment of birth for the most tenuous of reasons.”
Referencing HB2491, the controversial 40 week abortion bill filed by Delegate Kathy Tran (D-Springfield), which ultimately failed, Garrett warned that the provisions of the bill could be mandated by the courts if the ERA were to be enacted.
Garrett cited three court cases where state-level provisions similar to the ERA were used by courts to overturn abortion restrictions.
In a case out of Texas from 2001, Art. I, § 3a of the state’s constitution was used to overturn restrictions on taxpayer funding for abortion. Previously, Texas law limited state funded abortion services to cases involving rape, incest, or a threat to the life of the mother. Under this language, courts ruled that restriction, one supported by most Americans, to be invalid.
Garrett also cited a case from Connecticut, in which Art. I, § 20 of the state’s constitution was as the basis for ruling state restrictions on abortion invalid.
In a third case he referenced, from New Mexico, N.M. Right to Choose/NARAL, Abortion & Reprod. Health Servs., Planned Parenthood of the Rio Grande v. Johnson (126 N. M. 788), the Supreme Court of New Mexico ruled that the state constitution required taxpayer funding for elective abortion, on account of language nearly identical to the proposed ERA (Art. II, § 18).
“Based on the independent grounds provided by the Equal Rights Amendment to Article II, Section 18 of the New Mexico Constitution, we affirm the district court’s orders granting Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, permanently enjoining the Department from enforcing its May 1995 revision of Rule 766, and awarding costs to Plaintiffs,” ruled the court.
These cases predate a ruling handed down in Alaska this week following a similar pattern.
“Brought by Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest, the lawsuit argued that the regulations violated the equal protection clause of Alaska’s constitution by discriminating against women choosing to have an abortion,” reported Jurist.org, a legal research collaboration affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh.
“Under the contested law, abortions would only be covered under Medicaid though additional requirements. The 2013 regulation, 7 AAC 160.900(d)(30), required a physician to certify an abortion only for circumstances permitted under the Hyde Amendment or if deemed medically necessary. The Hyde Amendment only allows federal funding for an abortion when the mother’s life is endangered by a full-term pregnancy term or the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.”
Ayala’s rules change effort comes on the heels of a Democratic push to loosen restrictions on abortion as a major plank of the party’s campaign efforts for the fall elections.
Abortion first became an issue in the 2019 campaign cycle when Democratic leaders, including Governor Ralph Northam, Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, and Attorney General Mark Herring held a press conference with over a dozen lawmakers, announcing that Tran’s Repeal Act would be a “priority” on the campaign trail.
In that announcement, Northam and other Democrats looked forward to a Democratic majority in the House of Delegates and the Senate of Virginia which would pass the legislation and send it to his desk for approval.
“So when can’t change peoples minds, we need to change seats,” said Northam.
“We need a pro-choice majority in the General Assembly,” added Herring.
That event, held on January 17th, predated Tran’s now-infamous committee testimony by eleven days.
The Repeal Act enjoys strong support from Democratic lawmakers, having received the sponsorship of a majority of Democratic members in the General Assembly.
When introduced, 54% of them signed on as sponsors, though that number fell to 51% after Delegate Dawn Adams (D-Henrico) withdrew her sponsorship following the backlash, telling constituents in an email that she failed to read the bill.
Last Friday, the deadline for withdrawing sponsorship passed. 34 Democrats remained active sponsors of the failed legislation.
With abortion now a top issue for the fall, Ayala’s unprecedented push to bypass the House’s committee system through a rules change represents the last opportunity for Democrats to deliver a legislative victory for pro-abortion voters.
Republicans have pledged to fight the attempt, disagreeing both with the underlying policy and what they called an “affront” to the rules targeted at one specific legislative measure.
In closing, Garrett remarked that everyone in the chamber would support ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment were it not for the provision expanding taxpayer funded late term abortion.
“So in in closing, Mr. Speaker, let me be clear on one thing: if this amendment before us were just about equality, and its advocates could prove that it would not do exactly what the courts have already found it does, then I would be the first person to vote for it because I have a wife and a daughter, and I believe they deserve the same rights and respect that all people should receive,” he said. “And I believe you would not find a single dissenting vote in this house were that the case.”
“But Mr. Speaker, I wholeheartedly believe that this is not what this amendment is about.”
Garrett concluded by urging the measure’s defeat.
In Heartfelt Speech, Del. Margaret Ransone Defends Women’s Achievement While Opposing ERA
In a heartfelt speech which has since racked up hundreds of thousands of views online, Delegate Margaret Ransone (R-Kinsale) spoke on her career, her accomplishments, and her service in the General Assembly following days of heated and uncivil debate over the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.
“I am a woman and I’m an elected member of the oldest legislative body in the New World, the Virginia House of Delegates,” opened Ransone. “Needless to say I’m very proud of that and I’m proud of how I got here.”
Ransone, in her eighth year as a delegate, helps manage her family’s oyster company, located in Kinsale, in Virginia’s Northern Neck.
Her voice breaking on occasion, Ransone rose to the floor on Tuesday following a heated committee hearing that morning in which she voted against ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, saying it would be duplicitous of existing protections in the US and Virginia constitutions while potentially opening the door to taxpayer funding of abortion by court order.
In that hearing, Ransone said, attendees covered the ears of their young daughters when she began to speak, depriving the young women in attendance of the opportunity to hear both sides of the debate.
Ransone said feeling silenced was a low point in her public service career.
“Do you know as soon as I started to speak, mothers in the room who simply disagreed with my position covered their daughters ears, as a sign to me and to their daughters that in the political process you don’t have to listen to people who mom disagrees with. And, to be honest, it was a low my public service career because when I simply wanted to empower young women that message delivered from a Republican woman simply wasn’t worth hearing.”
“Well, today, I will deliver that message again, to the young women and to their mothers and to daughters, and even to the twenty seven women in this body. Never, never let anyone tell you that you need anything more than hard work, determination, heart, and a strong work ethic to be successful in life,” Ransone continued.
Earlier that day, several measures making Virginia the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment failed in the House’s Privileges and Elections Subcommittee #1, which Ransone chairs, following earlier passage in the Senate. While the full Privileges and Elections committee could still report the resolutions, observers said the subcommittee recommendation was likely to be followed, resulting in the amendment’s failure this year.
The committee’s vote followed weeks of debate and rallies by supporters and opponents of the amendment, which grew increasingly heated as the session dragged on.
Ransone also dismissed suggestions that men had “bullied” her into voting a specific way.
“The men in this body, on both sides of the aisle, they respect me and they have become incredible friends to me, and I’ve earned their respect,” she continued, praising her colleagues. “They’ve embraced me, and they’ve embraced my opinions, and they believe in me. And that’s incredible.”
“They empower me to speak my mind just like I’m doing today.”
Responding forcefully, Ransone said her vote was hers alone, elaborating on why she felt the Equal Rights Amendment was not necessary.
“And as a strong independent woman it was my choice to vote against the ERA. Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. Women deserve equal treatment. Women deserve to be paid fairly. Women deserve to have every opportunity in life. Just like a man does.”
“And thanks to the 14th Amendment and the Virginia Constitution violating any one of those is against the law.”
Ransone also warned that ratification of the measure currently before the General Assembly could lead to years of court challenges, as the Congressionally-imposed deadline for ratification passed in 1982, one decade after the amendment was approved on Capitol Hill and sent to the states.
Previously, in the 1939 case Coleman v. Miller, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress did have the authority to set a deadline for ratification.
Writing a majority opinion in a case concerning Kansas’ vote to ratify a child labor amendment, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes stated such a limitation was a “question for the political departments, with the ultimate authority in the Congress in the exercise of its control over the promulgation of the adoption of the amendment.”
Continuing the message she shared earlier in committee, Ransone closed by encouraging young women to follow their dreams and let nothing stand in their way.
“Never let anyone tell you that you need to wait on any law to be successful,” she said. “Nothing stopped any of us with hard work and determination and a big heart nothing’s going to stop you either.”
In the end, Ransone had the last word — turning what had been an attempt to silence her voice into a speech which went viral on the Internet.
Virginia Senate Passes Equal Rights Amendment, Sent To House of Delegates
Virginia is close to becoming the 38th state to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, but the legislation now faces a House of Delegates where it has died five times in the past eight years.