This Friday, Sept. 18, Virginia will begin early voting for the Nov. 3 election, which for residents is not only about the midterms, but also about two amendments, both introduced and sponsored by Northern Virginia Democrats. The Virginia Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment, an extremist abortion-until-birth measure, and the Virginia Remove Constitutional Same-Sex Marriage Ban Amendment are grim reminders that, for the left, there is no “moderation.”
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger ran, infamously, as a moderate candidate — and she supports both proposed amendments. It’s further proof that when given the opportunity to radically broaden access to aborting babies, restricting religious freedom, or exploiting children through surrogacy, Democrats will take it.
A Most Radically Extreme ‘Reproductive Freedom’ Amendment
Virginia’s so-called “reproductive rights” amendment, introduced by House Majority Leader Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, and sponsored in the Senate by Democrat Jennifer Boysko, seeks to insert unrestricted abortion directly into Virginia’s Constitution. “We’re one step closer to protecting the entire continuum of reproductive health care in Virginia, from contraception to miscarriage care as well as IVF,” Herring told The Washington Post.
Specifically, the amendment would unleash abortion in the state by adding a new section 11-A to Article I of the Virginia Constitution declaring that “every individual has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom.” The constitutional language frames the changes in terms of so-called “care”: “prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, abortion care, miscarriage management, and fertility care.”
In fact, it would allow unregulated abortion, even for healthy babies — for any reason. It would reduce parental oversight, effectively restricting parents’ ability to intervene in irreversible decisions for underage daughters. And, in its language that the “commonwealth shall not penalize, prosecute, or otherwise take adverse action against an individual” for killing unborn babies “or for aiding or assisting another individual in the exercise of such right,” it effectively permits non-physicians to operate unlicensed abortion establishments.
This is because it could make Virginia’s existing laws against unlicensed abortionists constitutionally unenforceable, because the proposed amendment protects both persons obtaining an abortion and anyone who “aids” them. As The Federalist has noted, the amendment and its deceptive language would usher in one of the most extreme pro-abortion state regimes in the country.
The expansive “care” clause also constitutionalizes a kind of laissez-faire anarchy for surrogacy and Big IVF, an industry already rife with abuses and moral evils.
A Means to Attack Religious Liberty and Promote Surrogacy
The Virginia Remove Constitutional Same-Sex Marriage Ban Amendment, introduced by former Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax, and sponsored in the Senate by former Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, parallels the abortion amendment in its radicalism. The amendment’s supporters claim that the commonwealth’s current constitutional prohibition against same-sex unions — approved by Virginia voters a mere 20 years ago — is both anomalous and dangerous.
They argue that the 2015 Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges could potentially be overturned by the highest court and, as happened with abortion via the 2022 decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, be thrust back upon the states. Indeed, Justice Clarence Thomas at the time did suggest that the court should reconsider other substantive-due-process precedents, including Obergefell.
The proposed amendment would make the following changes to Article I, Section 15-A of the Virginia Constitution: delete the existing one-man/one-woman definition of marriage; assert that “marriage is one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness;” mandate that Virginia and its political subdivisions issue marriage licenses to two adults regardless of “sex, gender, or race;” and require state recognition of “any lawful marriage between two adult persons.” Note that this language would actually codify radical gender ideology by differentiating “sex” and “gender,” thus effectively recognizing transgenderism as legitimate.
The amendment would also deny rights of conscience and religious liberty safeguards, because even though the original amendment contained a provision protecting religious organizations and clergy from being required to perform or recognize marriages, Democrats excised that language from the final 2026 version. This thus opens the door for religious organizations and clergy to be sued or prosecuted by the state for refusing to officiate or acknowledge these ceremonies. Moreover, by extension, the amendment would reinforce a legal framework in which commercial surrogacy becomes a regular means of family formation for homosexual couples.
The Deadly Irony of Language
What is particularly contemptible about these two amendments is their cynical co-opting of the language of our founding to promote evil. The “reproductive freedom amendment” is conversant in the language of rights and freedom, but entirely elides the rights of the living being in the womb to survive.
Regardless of your position on whether abortion should ever be permitted, the Virginia amendment is the epitome of extreme, allowing viable babies to be killed right up to birth. Indeed, a baby can be aborted not only if he or she is purportedly unviable, but for the sake of “protect[ing] the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual.” That is incredible latitude for medical practitioners, given that in truth every birth presents a potential risk to the physical or mental health of the mother.
The same-sex union amendment’s referral to the Declaration of Independence in its claim that marriage is a right “essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness” is also deplorable. As our Bill of Rights makes perfectly clear, the right to religious freedom trumps an individual’s desire to be happy, especially when that conception of happiness is not the classical eudaimonia intended by Thomas Jefferson (meaning human flourishing), but a fabricated “right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life,” as Justice Anthony Kennedy claimed in the 1992 decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Moreover, the Virginia Democrats’ amendments entirely ignore the welfare of children forced to be raised not by a mother and father but by “two mommies” or “two daddies,” — or to be gestated by a third-party mother who must give up the “product” child or, horrifically, as we are sometimes seeing, be pressured to abort the child.
The amendments reiterate that no matter how loudly Democrats proclaim their “moderation,” leftists remain zealously committed to radical cultural revolution intended not only to reshape American society, but to attack fundamental rights to life and liberty.
