Follow up: Activists oppose signing clinic regulations into law in Monroe Park

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Virginia Coalition to Protect Women’s Health and pro-choice organizations gathered in last attempt to urge Gov. Bob McDonnell to reconsider signing Senate Bill 924.

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Mechelle Hankerson
News Editor

After attempts to formally oppose Senate Bill 924, which imposes strict restrictions on certain women’s health clinics, the Virginia Coalition to Protect Women’s Health and other pro-choice organizations gathered one last time on Saturday to urge Gov. Bob McDonnell to reconsider before signing the regulations into law.

The Virginia Coalition to Protect Women’s Health teamed with the Young Democrats at VCU in September to protest the regulations that had not yet passed through the Virginia Board of Health.

Since then, the Board of Health did pass the regulations and the regulations have moved to McDonnell, who, according to the coalition, will mostly likely sign the regulations into law.

This time, the organizing groups moved their protest outside of the Compass and took to Monroe Park where two hours of speakers called the Richmond pro-choice community to action.

VCU alumna and current member of the Feminist Majority Foundation, Corrina Beall introduced the speakers of the event. The event featured activists, women’s health care providers and representatives from pro-faith, pro-choice groups.

“Access to choice and women’s health care is so crucial right now in our national dialogue about where we’re going as a country,” Beall said. “So many people tell me that this abortion fight was their mother’s fight and they don’t want to do it again. We’re having to return to that fight, and now that fight that was our mother’s fight is our fight.”

Virginia delegate Charniele Herring spoke to the crowd, publicly challenging Gov. McDonnell to “(have) the courage to stand up to (Attorney General) Ken Cuccinelli.”

Herring, like the majority of the event’s speakers, encouraged participants to vote in November, but other speakers spoke about being more open about the issue of abortions, like pro-choice activist Maggie Clayton, who told the crowd that she had been fighting for women’s rights since Roe v. Wade in 1973.

Clayton, with the Unitarian Universalists for Choice, participated in a rally recently where she debuted a new sign that read, “No more shame: I had an abortion.”

The rally featured keynote speaker, Eleanor Smeal, the president of Virginia-based Feminist Majority Foundation.

“This law is to close these clinics,” Smeal said. “It’s not a law until the government signs it, but (these are) the most extreme regulations in the 50 states, and I don’t think the state, which is a more moderate state, should be in the most extreme category.”

In addition to the focus on the power of voting, women’s health care providers, like Mary Cutting, a representative from Falls Church Healthcare Center, called on the governor to simply listen.

“Governor, come talk to us about what would improve women’s healthcare,” she said to the crowd.

Cutting claimed there was no dialogue with women’s health centers before regulations were drafted.

Tarina Keene, chair of the Virginia Coalition to Protect Women’s Health and executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, recognized that the group may be pursuing their ultimate goals for years, but was optimistic about the final outcome.

“If (the government) wants to fight,” she told the crowd, “they’ve picked the wrong group to scrap with.”

A full list of regulations can be viewed online at http://www.vdh.virginia.gov/Administration/Meetings/.

Photos by Kyle Laferriere

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