License Plate Games
What goes around, comes around!
For years, anti-choice advocates have been trying to muscle through the General Assembly a license plate that says “Choose Life”. They’re at it again this session. However this year, there is a “Trust Women, Respect Choice” license plate also trying to make its way through the GA. Proceeds from its sale will benefit Planned Parenthood of Virginia.
This presents quite the legal pickle for anti-choice legislators. For it is unconstitutional to permit an anti-abortion plate without allowing “all other viewpoints on the same subject”. Reports the AP: “The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has twice ruled the government cannot unreasonably censor or favor one viewpoint on specialty plates because they are a public forum. ‘The General Assembly has stepped into a legal morass now,’ said Sen. Janet Howell, who is sponsoring one of two bills to establish the plate. ‘You can’t have just one point of view represented on license plates. You have to have both.’”
And ACLU stands at the ready to file suit if the State so proceeds. The State will lose and Cuccinelli’s right-wing zealotry will cost us taxpayers big $ bucks.
But it may not get to that point as it’ll be all or nothing. The Senate Transportation Committee yesterday packaged all the license plate bills into one omnibus bill. Anti-choicers interested in getting their plate through will have to vote for the pro-choice plate as well. Ha!
Join us on Facebook.
Follow us on Twitter.
February 9th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
These org plates should be $300 and their poofy vanity plate cousins should be $500. Virginia should make as much as possible off of all these egomaniacs who need to preach to us via their license plates.
It is fair that this group was able to gather the 350 signatures to qualify for their very own preachy plate. One has to wonder what phrases got rejected by the selection committee. Here are some that didn’t make the cut:
1. It’s not MURDER when Women do it.
2. Sixty Million Crack Babies Eliminated (so far).
3. Abortion: Twenty-first Century Eugenics.
4. It Beats Buying a Rubber.
5. Democrats kill them now, Republicans kill them later.
6. Abortion is Working for All of Us.
7. Trust Women, to Know Who to Murder.
8. Found a parking space? Thank an Abortionist.
9. Harvesting Stem Cells for a Better Tomorrow.
10. What Did You Think Your Cosmetics are Made From?
And, finally too long to be considered: NARAL has got your back, so go ahead and kill that obnoxious teenager of yours and we can call it a, “late term abortion.