Here's A Real Antidote To Trump's Big Bullshit Bill'

We can't wait for the mid terms to battle Trump. Flipping Virginia's governorship will protect repro rights & democracy. Here, I spoke with Democratic candidate for gov Abigail Spanberger.

Photo courtesy of Abigail Spanberger

I’ve written before about how there’s just one proven way to fight back if you are devastated by Donald Trump and the Republican party’s war on women and our reproductive rights.

And you don’t have to wait until the mid term elections to do it and get positive real life results.

It sounds basic but it works. You have to vote for ‘pro choice’ and ‘pro democracy’ Democratic candidates in every city, town, state legislature, country judge and school board election in your area.

There are no longer any ‘moderate’ Republican candidates who support reproductive freedom for women. Zippo. No matter how they may try to fudge it on their websites by calling their abortion views, ‘mainstream’.

Don’t get conned by the likes of ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ House Rep Mike Lawler from New York’s 17th Congressional district, who try to disguise their hard line anti abortion views.

So trust me when I say that to protect the full range of women’s reproductive rights and democracy in today’s America, there needs to be a ‘D’ in front of every candidate’s name that you vote for.

The uplifting news right now, is that you can help save women’s repro rights and democracy by supporting Democratic candidates in two critical battles for governor and state legislatures in Virginia and New Jersey in elections which will be held Nov 4, 2025.

Yup - a full year ahead of when Democrats get an opportunity to win back the House of Representatives and the Senate in Washington D.C., we can flip Virginia’s governorship from being held by an anti abortion Republican, to a pro choice Democrat and we can help elect bigger Democratic majorities in both of those state houses.

So here we are less than a week after Trump passed his Big Bullshit Bill throwing 40% of the pregnant women in this country off Medicaid who need it to deliver their babies. It’s time to stop downing margaritas and hiding under the bed covers.

Instead you can start spreading the word about two Democratic women - both of whom are champions for women’s reproductive healthcare - Mikie Sherrrill, who is running for governor of New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger, who is in a battle to be governor of Virginia.

I haven’t met Mikie Sherrill yet but I interviewed Abigail Spanberger when she first announced that she would throw her hat into the ring for Virginia governor instead of running for re -election to Congress where she had been a three term Congresswoman for Virginia’s 7th Congressional district.

One of my main goals with this Substack channel is to meet and interview Democratic candidates who are fully supportive of a woman’s right to abortion, contraception and IVF so I can be able to share important info about them with you, my readers.

I’d like you to get to ‘meet’ and learn about these candidates who if elected will stand strong against Donald Trump, RFK Jr and the reactionary Supreme Court who are all determined to strip women of essential abortion and miscarriage care.

It doesn’t even end with banning abortions. The supposedly pro family Republican party wants to make it next to impossible for millions of women to get breast, cervical, uterine and ovarian cancer screenings. They don’t want women to get checked and treated for sexually transmitted diseases and they are even trying to limit women’s access to hormonal birth control and IUDs

They are doing that by ‘stealing’ Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood and other women’s reproductive healthcare clinics which provide these checkups and screenings to millions of American women across the country.

SPANBERGER: I DONT HAVE THE RIGHT TO TELL OTHER WOMEN WHAT CHOICES TO MAKE

Abigail Spanberger, stands firm against this Republican war on abortion and all of women’s reproductive healthcare.

“I’m a mother, I have three daughters and fundamentally I do not believe that as an individual or a lawmaker I have a right to tell other women what choices they should make,” she told me when I interviewed her for Dogwood, an excellent Virginia news site that is committed to factual reporting.

She continued: “And I’ll tell you, across my campaigns—particularly in 2022 after the fall of Roe and after the Dobbs decision—I heard it across the board from men, from women, from grandparents, to young people who were horrified at the realities that we were already starting to see on the ground here in Virginia.”

Those realities were the thousands of desperate women from other states traveling to Virginia for abortions and even miscarriage care.

That’s because Virginia found stood as the very last southern state where abortion was still legal.

The Commonwealth so far has preserved the legality of abortion up to 27 weeks and 6 days and even after that, women who are at risk of suffering either physically or mentally if a pregnancy continues, can obtain necessary abortions.

In other words - Virginia remains a sane oasis - in the midst of deep red southern states that have mostly banned abortions from conception or 6 weeks at the latest.

Spanberger vows that she will keep Virginia that way.

She has also pledged in response to the growing Republican campaign to establish ‘personhood’ for fetuses and to therefore ban IVF, that should she be elected governor, she would work tirelessly “to prevent politicians and judges from intruding into personal reproductive health care and family-planning decisions”

“We cannot allow our Commonwealth to move backward, and we will certainly not make it harder for hopeful parents to decide when and how to grow their families,” she said.

That must sound like music to the ears of Virginian women after the current Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin tried in 2023 to shove a 15 week abortion ban into law in Virginia.

Fortunately, voters told him to stuff his ban and instead they elected Democratic majorities in the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates in 2023 and those two bodies passed the first stage of an amendment to protect abortion in the Virginia constitution.

The amendment covers “the fundamental right to reproductive freedom, including the ability to make and carry out decisions relating to one’s own prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, abortion care, miscarriage management and fertility care.”

Youngkin wasn’t happy about the defeat of his 15 week ban and neither was his zealously anti abortion Republican Lieutenant General, Winsome Earle - Sears. In fact, in her capacity as president of the Virginia Senate, Earle - Sears scrawled a written objection across the constitutional amendment which passed , saying “I am morally opposed to this bill; no protection for the child.”

Now Earle - Sears , also a mother of two living daughters, is the Republican candidate for governor running against Spanberger.

SPANBERGER’S OPPONENT CALLS ABORTION GENOCIDE

Earle - Sears has called abortion “Black genocide,” and has complained “that her fellow Black mothers were not sufficiently pro-life.” She’s been found to repeatedly spread the horrific misinformation that babies are being aborted up to the moment of birth, and even murdered after birth.

She doesn’t support abortion even for rape or incest. Nor did she support the Right to Contraception Act, which was passed by Virginia’s Democratic majority General Assembly but which Glenn Youngkin vetoed just this past May.

No surprise - Earle-Sears Youngkin also voted against the bill.

The Right to Contraception Act would have protected the rights of Virginians to obtain contraceptives and information about contraception, as well as the right to provide contraceptives and contraception information.

Now why the H, Glenn Youngkin and Earle - Sears would have a problem with guaranteeing that Virginians have a right to get contraception, I don’t know exactly, but it can’t be good.

You have to conclude with Republicans today that their reasons for cutting women off from every kind of reproductive healthcare whether it’s abortion or breast cancer checkups or access to birth control , has to be because they have no respect for women as equal members of society.

Actually, I think it goes further than that. I don’t think they want women to remain equal members of society. They want us subservient - Handmade’s Tale-style.

And let’s face it - they honestly don’t care if American women get sick and die or bleed out from either miscarriages or a child birth complications.

They just don’t care.

But they DO care about controlling the ability of women to be anything but obedient wives and mothers.

Abigail Spanberger is a wife and a mother but she is exactly the kind of strong, smart woman - a former CIA agent before she ran for Congress - who Republicans seem hell bent on trying to subjugate.

But she refuses to be subjugated. She is defiant.

She will in a complete 180 contrast to her Republican opponent for the Virginia governorship, Earle - Sears - stand up for women to be equal citizens who make their own decisions about personal matters. “Protecting rights and protecting privacy is extraordinarily popular in Virginia and across the country,” she tells me.

Electing Democratic candidates in every race whether it’s local, state or national, blocks the Republican dream of controlling women’s bodily autonomy, period.

Trump and Republicans hope that if women can’t control whether or when they have children, then talented female leaders like Spanberger or Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey won’t run for political office and millions of other smart and ambitious American women won’t start businesses or rise up in the corporate world or even be teachers, doctors and scientists.

I can’t explain why women like Earle- Sears get co-opted to support this anti female agenda, but at this point she’s a true believer . So I’m hoping you can join the fight to make sure that she has no chance to triumph over Spanberger.

You can donate to Spanberger’s campaign directly or can sign up through groups like Indivisible to write postcards to Virginia voters urging them to vote or when the election is closer, you can also sign up to phone bank ie to call Virginia voters and tell them more about Spanberger.

ELECTING SPANBERGER HELPS ALL AMERICAN WOMEN STOP TRUMP

The stakes are huge for Virginians and really for all American women today who believe that they and their daughters are equal members of society and deserve to have access to abortion and to full range of reproductive healthcare.

If Virginians elect Spanberger and a Democratic majority in their Senate and House of Delegates this coming November, then both Houses will be able to re-approve the abortion amendment in 2026.

Then finally, everyday Virginians will get their turn to approve the amendment when it appears on a ballot in November 2026. If the abortion amendment passes, then the right to abortion care will finally become part of the Commonwealth’s Constitution.

Right now , sixty-two percent of Virginians support this constitutional amendment according to a poll by Virginia Commonwealth University.

Meanwhile abortions in the state were up over 16% between 2023 and 2024, as desperate pregnant people flocked to the state from all over the South. Planned Parenthood in Virginia recorded a leap in needy patients coming from outside Virginia, from 2% to 30% in the year after the Supreme Court struck down Roe V Wade as chaos reigned in every red state which imposed extreme abortion bans.

“We’re watching what is happening in neighboring states,” Spanberger told me.“And certainly the whole world is watching what’s happening in places like Texas where women are being turned away from essential care and women are forced to face the threat of losing their own lives and of losing their fertility. This is very real.”

I couldn’t agree more and if you do too then put down the margaritas, push back the bed covers and do whatever you can to battle the Republican war on women by helping to flip the Virginia governorship blue in November.

Having observed Spanberger in Congress, having met her, talked with her and learned about her true commitment to women’s rights, I sure think she’d make a great governor. Let’s help her do it!

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