RICHMOND, Virginia (LifeSiteNews) — Virginia’s new Democrat Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed legislation on Friday approving multiple proposed constitutional amendments to go before Virginia voters this year for final adoption, including measures to embed abortion-on-demand and homosexual “marriage” in state law.
The Virginia Mercury reports that Spanberger, who defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earl-Sears for the governorship last fall, signed them as part of a slate of other proposed amendments addressing a range of issues.
The marriage amendment would ensure that, if forced recognition of homosexual “marriage” were ever to be undone at the federal level, homosexual unions would continue to be recognized as marriages in Virginia law. Otherwise, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell ruling being overturned and the 2023 federal “Respect for Marriage Act” getting repealed would cause a 2006 amendment defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman to be reactivated.
The abortion amendment, meanwhile, would establish in the Virginia Constitution a “right” to surgical abortions, abortion pills, contraception, and fertility “treatments,” such as embryo-destructive in vitro fertilization (IVF). Abortion is legal in Virginia, but subject to a number of regulations such as clinic standards, parental involvement and informed consent requirements, and limits on public funding. All such restrictions would be put at risk should the amendment become law.
Last year, a study by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute found that abortions in Virginia increased by 5,500 from 2023 to 2024, driven mostly by women traveling from pro-life states.
Virginia women “deserve the freedom to make their own reproductive healthcare decisions without politicians dictating their choices,” the governor declared.
Both amendments (along with proposals for redistricting and to restore voting rights to ex-convicts) will appear on the Virginia ballot this fall, and will require only a simple majority vote to be added to the Virginia Constitution.
Pro-abortion state constitutional amendments have been one of the abortion lobby’s most potent tactics to preserve abortion “access” without Roe v. Wade. Up until 2024, it had consistent success since the overturn of Roe using false claims that pro-life laws are dangerous to stoke fear about the issue among the general public.
After 2020, pro-lifers either failed to enact pro-life amendments or stop pro-abortion ones in California, Kentucky, Michigan, Vermont, Kansas, and Ohio, prompting much conversation among pro-lifers about the need to develop new strategies to protect life at the ballot box as well as consternation within the Republican Party over the political ramifications of continuing to take a clear pro-life position.
Ten states had such amendments on the ballot in November 2024. Pro-lifers defeated pro-abortion ballot initiatives in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota, breaking the abortion lobby’s two-year winning streak, but amendments to embed abortion “rights” in state constitutions prevailed in the remaining states.