Democrats putting reproductive rights front and center with elections on the horizon

You can expect that reproductive rights will be a ballot issue in the 2025 Virginia elections, and to that end, we have House Democrats pushing forward two pieces of legislation that will put the issue front and center with voters.

On Tuesday, the House of Delegates voted 51-49 – totally along party lines – to pass an amendment that would enshrine reproductive rights in the Virginia Constitution.

The constitutional-amendment process in Virginia requires that both the House and Senate vote to pass a proposed amendment twice, with an election in between the two votes, before the measure can get on the ballot for a statewide referendum.

So, yes, this one is guaranteed to be an issue going into the fall, when we go to the polls to elect a new governor.

The second measure, the Virginia Right to Contraception Act, passed its first legislative hurdle, advancing out of the House Health and Human Services Committee on a 15-7 vote.

This bill would codify a person’s right to contraception by recognizing an individual’s right to use FDA-approved methods of contraception, including condoms, the pill, IUDs and emergency contraceptives.

The impetus to this bill is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In his concurrence in the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade,  Thomas called on the court to “reconsider” Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court case recognizing a right to contraception.

“Thanks to the leadership of Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly, Virginia remains the only state in the South where reproductive rights haven’t been rolled back since the Dobbs decision. But Virginians deserve the certainty of knowing that their rights are protected in the Virginia Constitution. Our Commonwealth needs to be a place where Virginians’ right to choose, right to privacy, right to access IVF, and right to contraception are guaranteed,” said Abigail Spanberger, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for governor.

Republicans are coalescing around Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, meaning, we’re going to have our first woman governor, but Earle-Sears is a reproductive-rights opponent, to the point that she has expressed support for Texas’s controversial six-week abortion ban that even her own campaign concedes has no chance of ever passing in Virginia.

But she supports it anyway.

“As a mother, I know that attacks on these rights are deeply personal,” Spanberger said. “Reproductive healthcare decisions should be made by women and their doctors with the support of family and friends, and without fear that politicians in Richmond will dictate their choices — choices that could potentially jeopardize their health, future ability to bear children, or even their lives.”