Last year’s Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which effectively overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, dramatically changed how women access reproductive health services, including abortion.
Virginia is one of only two states that doesn’t codify access to abortion in its constitution and didn’t have a law on the books set to take effect when Roe fell. That puts the issue front and center on the ballot in November, when voters should protect reproductive health choices for women throughout the commonwealth.
Though the pro-life movement had fought for the court to overturn Roe for decades, when those efforts proved successful last year, it created a cloud of uncertainty about the future of abortion services in America.
The Roe decision rested on the conclusion that the Due Process Clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment includes a right to privacy, which supersedes state restrictions on abortion services. Dobbs, conversely, says there is no such right and punted the issue back to individual states.
What’s followed is a mishmash of laws that vary tremendously from one state to the next. A woman in one state may decide with her doctor that abortion is the right course and face few, if any, hurdles; a woman elsewhere may live in a state that has criminalized abortion with few, if any, exceptions, forcing her to bring the baby to term — possibly at the risk of her health or that of the fetus.
Some states had those draconian laws already on the books, set to take effect in what was considered the unlikely event the court overturned Roe. Other states guarded against that possibility by enshrining the right to abortion access in their state constitutions, putting it out of reach of meddling legislative busybodies.
Virginia did neither. Republican legislatures did not pass a so-called “trigger law” when they held sway in Richmond, and united Democratic control of the General Assembly and Governor’s Mansion similarly failed to deliver an amendment to protect abortion access.
That leaves the issue determined by the laws on the books — which generally follows the Roe standard of permitting abortion through the first two trimesters, but requiring approval from three physicians after that timeframe. Virginia allows abortion at any time to protect the life of the mother, but also requires that life-saving services be at the ready should a fetus show signs of viability.
The commonwealth’s neighbors with Republican legislatures moved aggressively in the wake of Dobbs to tighten their restrictions. That includes North Carolina, which now prohibits abortion after 12 weeks. Pregnancies caused by rape and incest are only allowed through 20 weeks and the state’s “life of the mother” exception expires at 24 weeks.
“Virginia is now serving as a central access point for abortion in the South, while also currently facing its own barriers to care,” Tarina Keene, executive director of REPRO Rising, told The Virginian-Pilot in May.
Commonwealth Republicans have made no secret that, if given control of the General Assembly, they would work with Gov. Glenn Youngkin to impose similar restrictions here.
“Any bill that comes to my desk I will sign happily and gleefully in order to protect life,” Youngkin said last year, and promised to pursue a ban after 15 weeks. Several bills introduced by Republican members this year to restrict abortion access failed to gain traction in the Democratic-led Senate, including one that the sponsor, Sen. Travis Hackworth, described as “a life at conception bill” that would prohibit the procedure after 20 weeks.
Democrats cannot win the Governor’s Mansion this year, nor will they win supermajorities to override a gubernatorial veto to expand abortion access. But the party’s candidates, by and large, promise to hold the line on access and prevent further restrictions when the legislature convenes next year.
Virginia should remain a place where a woman and her doctor can make reproductive health decisions based on their individual circumstances and needs. The parties have been clear about their intentions, and voters should respond accordingly.
