Abortion remains a key topic as the governor takes his final actions on bills from the General Assembly.
Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin now has the record for the most number of vetoes of any governor in recent memory, and he rolled out new abortion vetoes over the weekend. Here's Senator Barbara Favola, a Democrat from Arlington who introduced one of the vetoed bills that would’ve protected women and providers from being extradited to Tennessee or Texas, where abortion is much more restricted.
"You can imagine a woman who had to cobble together money to leave her state and then take time off from work, come to Virginia alone, scarred," Favola says. "We should be able to provide that woman the peace of mind that she won't be extradited.”
The governor also signed a bill prohibiting search warrants or court orders for menstrual data, although Delegate Marcus Simon, a Democrat from Falls Church, says he's not impressed.
"I don't want to give the governor too much credit for signing the bill that says that menstrual data can't be subject to subpoenas. That's a fairly narrow thing that he's agreed to," Simon says. "When he vetoed my bill, HB1539, he also vetoed language that would’ve made it a violation of the Virginia Consumer Protection Act for digital companies that track menstrual data and women's healthcare data, including location data about what they've shopped for, where they’ve shopped for it, where they've gone."
Lawmakers will be back in Richmond next week to consider how they want to respond to all the governor's many vetoes.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
