Terry McAuliffe Continues to Disappoint Those Who Put Him in Office

Broken Promises

Perhaps it is a good thing that Virginia Governors are only allowed to serve a single four year term.  Why?  Because Governor Terry McAuliffe seems to be hell bent to alienate those who put him in office.  True, a McAuliffe administration is far better than the batshitery that would have surrounded a Ken Cuccinelli regime, but McAullife continues to take actions that throw different elements of the base who elected him under the bus.  First he backed a chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia who opposes marriage equality.  Now he has signed a bill that contains a "conscience clause" drafted by the Christofascists at The Family Foundation ("TFF"). If I were Mark Warner and other Democrats facing elections in the fall I'd be very concerned about McAullife's actions which are demoralizing the base and aiding Republicans. Mother Jones looks at the bill McAullife signed with language hand crafted by the hate merchants at TFF.  Here are excerpts:

In February, when Arizona state lawmakers passed a bill allowing business owners to refuse service to gay and lesbian customers on religious grounds, a ferocious national backlash forced Republican Gov. Jan Brewer to veto the legislation. But while Arizona legislators were catching heat, controversial "conscience clause" legislation quietly glided to passage in Virginia and was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Now, certain health care providers in Virginia have the right to turn away gays or lesbians or to withhold test results that could cause a patient to consider terminating her pregnancy.

The law, the product of two highly similar bills signed by McAuliffe on February 20 and March 20, establishes new rules for licensing genetic counselors. These are the health care professionals who help couples assess their odds of parenting a child with a genetic disorder, test individuals for genes indicative of disease, or detect fetal anomalies after a woman becomes pregnant. Genetic counseling is a fairly new field that was not previously regulated in Virginia, as is the case in many states around the country. Critics of the new law say they support oversight of the profession, but they strongly object to the law's "conscience clause" provision, which, in the words of the ACLU of Virginia, gives counselors "a license to discriminate."

"This is Arizona-lite," says Tarina Keene, the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia. She and other opponents point out that the law not only gives genetic counselors the right to refuse to help gay, lesbian, or unwed couples, but it also frees them to withhold a patient's test results if the counselor suspects the information might lead her to have an abortion—although they cannot lie about the results. "The way the law is written, if a genetic counselor doesn't think a patient will make 'the right choice' with the information you give them, well, then you don't have to tell them," says Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, the executive director of the ACLU of Virginia.

The law does require genetic counselors who refuse their services to provide a list of alternative counselors. But it does not specify in what timeframe they must produce that list. In a March 10 letter to McAuliffe asking him to veto one of the bills that created the law, the ACLU noted that the measure shields counselors from lawsuits in cases where they have discriminated against patients—even when their actions may have caused someone physical harm.

The law now reads, "Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to require any genetic counselor to participate in counseling that conflicts with their deeply-held moral or religious beliefs." For pro-choice activists, the new law is more than just another intrusion on reproductive rights. It represents a betrayal by McAuliffe. In 2013, when McAuliffe ran for governor against ardent abortion foe Ken Cuccinelli, abortion rights groups worked vigorously to help elect him. They believe McAuliffe owes them for generating high turnout among women voters who were disillusioned with the state's abortion-obsessed Republicans.

"We're extremely disappointed. We brought people power to that election. There was a 13-point gender gap" in favor of women, says Keene. "And you know why they were voting that way. We were hoping that this would be a new day, and our pro-choice partners at the legislative level would take this opportunity to do some proactive work."

First a betrayal of LGBT Virginians, now a betrayal of women.  One has to wonder what McAuliffe will do next to alienate minority voters.  The man is a major disappointment so far.  Yes, he's better than Cuccinelli, but he is not delivering what he promised.