Welcome, Jezebels, to the great commonwealth of Virginia. Please remember to sign up for organ donation when you apply for your new driver’s license if you’d like, and also if you could shoot our governor Glenn Youngkin your menstrual history so that he may track it like a bloodhound treeing a fox, he’d greatly appreciate it.
Well, how else is Governor Lurch supposed to know when you might be having abortions against his wishes, or undergoing gender transition, or just generally believing you have a right to keep your private medical information private? This is something up with which Glenn Youngkin will not put:
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.
The bill died in the Republican-controlled House of Delegates after the Youngkin administration announced its opposition, giving the Republicans on the subcommittee working on the House’s version an excuse to, um, abort it.
The governor’s administration had this to say in its defense:
“Currently, any health information or app information is available via search warrant,” said Virginia’s Deputy Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security Maggie Cleary, speaking on Youngkin’s behalf. “We believe that should continue to be the case.”
Is there any reason information about a woman’s menstrual cycle should not be excluded here? Or do we lack the imagination to think up law-enforcement scenarios where police and prosecutors would need to know when a woman’s body is expelling the monthly buildup of her uterine lining? (“Ma’am, you say you were in bed with cramps the night of the murder, but your period tracking app tells us you were not due to menstruate for another week. So tell the truth: That is you on that security tape wearing a ski mask and holding up the Chuck E. Cheese, is it not???”)
Abortions are currently legal in Virginia up until the 27th week of pregnancy. It has been a stated Youngkin goal to lower that to 15 weeks, which is not going to happen so long as Democrats have a majority in the state Senate. But anything he can do to make the environment even less friendly to women seeking to exercise control over their own reproductive systems, we guess.
This whole dustup comes in the midst of a nationwide push by conservative state legislators and weirdo vampire billionaires to make any woman’s menstrual data that she has in a period-tracking app available to the state. The creepy incels that run the state of Florida just recently backed down on forcing high school athletes to hand their menstruation data over to their schools, apparently because it is necessary to the continued function of the state to make sure your trans daughter is not allowed to go anywhere near her high school softball team.
Virginia hasn’t gotten there yet, but if Glenn Youngkin wants to add his name to the list of luminaries that will drop out of the 2024 GOP primary after pulling two percent of the vote in New Hampshire, rest assured that we will.
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