The White House has rebuked Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin for supporting state lawmakers’ rejection of a bill that would have prohibited police from issuing search warrants for digitized data about women’s menstrual cycles. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement on Friday that the Republican governor’s push to block the bill at a time when abortion access is diminishing “attacks the principles of freedom and a woman’s fundamental right to privacy.”
The bill had been passed by Virginia’s Democrat-controlled state Senate with a vote of 31-9, with nine Republicans joining Democrats to send it to the House, where Republicans hold a majority. However, a Republican-controlled House subcommittee voted along party lines on Monday to table the measure, with Youngkin’s support. The governor’s spokesperson, Macaulay Porter, defended Youngkin’s position, saying that the data-gathering limits proposed by Democrats were “unsafe.”
State Sen. Barbara Favola, an Arlington Democrat and the bill’s sponsor, told the Times-Dispatch on Friday that the proposed measure was needed to protect women’s privacy against the backdrop of “these very serious, very draconian abortion bans” nationwide. This bill is among many hot-button bills that have been rejected this year by Virginia’s divided legislature as the state prepares to vote this fall on all 140 General Assembly seats.
(Inputs from AP)
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