This month, I received a biopsy courtesy of Planned Parenthood. I live in Virginia and, for me, Planned Parenthood has consistently been a source of affordable and sometimes critical healthcare. Receiving a biopsy was stressful enough, but it also made me think about how my options would have been even more stressful if Heather Cordasco had her way in my state.
As you might know, Cordasco is running for House of Delegates in District 93. The record shows that Cordasco has been consistently, proudly anti-abortion. Her opposition to employer-provided contraception, abortion, and Planned Parenthood make her dangerous to the health of Virginia’s women if she is elected Delegate on November 7.
Heather Cordasco’s Aggressive Anti-Abortion-At-All-Costs Agenda
Cordasco has stayed strong in her anti-abortion-at-all-costs agenda. In a radio interview last year, Heather said one of her greatest regrets in life is not talking a close friend out of having an abortion in her early 20’s. However, it’s not just abortion Heather opposes, she was also a vocal opponent of the law that required employers to provide health insurance coverage for birth control.
Just like the Republican candidate for Virginia Attorney General, John Adams (who represented Hobby Lobby in the Supreme Court case to overturn the mandated coverage of birth control by employer provided health care plans), Heather believes that providing birth control to women is a violation of choice—for the employer. In 2014 she tweeted out conservative talking points on the case. The talking points even included the widely disproven claim that some long-acting birth control methods like IUDs cause abortions.
Heather argued that a group she supports, the Little Sisters of the Poor, would have to stop helping poor women if this birth control mandate is enforced. She harkened back to adoption agencies she claims closed in Chicago and D.C. because they wouldn’t comply with a law allowing adoptions by same-sex couples. It is misleading to say that groups who help women in need would stop their services because the women they were serving decided it wasn’t the right time to get pregnant.
Heather Cordasco: To the Right of Donald Trump?
In all of her tweets and public interviews, Heather never acknowledges that many women take birth control for health reasons beyond preventing pregnancy, (it even lowers the risks of some cancers). Heather has consistently ignored the healthcare benefits of birth control and the importance of health centers like Planned Parenthood. In a tweet in 2016, Heather even scolded Donald Trump himself on Twitter:
Cordasco’s Tweet is an outrageous lie, as Planned Parenthood provides more than 295,000 pap smear tests and more than 320,000 breast exams in a single year—all critical services in detecting cancer.
When you vote on November 7, think about who will best support you or the people in your life who need access to reproductive healthcare.