Virginia Dems Are Making Northam’s Baby-Killing Remarks Reality

Virginia legislators took a radical step forward in altering the state’s constitution on Friday, passing an extreme abortion amendment that will go to a people’s vote in November.

The Virginia “Fundamental Right to Reproductive Freedom” Amendment passed the House on Wednesday and the Senate on Friday along party lines, the result of a multi-year effort by Democrats to dismantle the few protections in place for the unborn in the state.

The amendment incorporates broad language and excludes basic safeguards. It includes no age limit, no parental rights, no ban on partial-birth abortions, no required medical treatment for babies born alive after a botched abortion, and no restrictions on taxpayer funding. The language goes so far as to protect anyone “aiding” a woman in killing her unborn child. Freedom of conscience protections are completely absent. 

Hundreds of Virginians from across the state, including Democrats for Life, flooded the General Assembly building on Thursday to oppose the amendment. In an effort led by the Virginia Society for Human Life and Virginia’s Catholic bishops, constituents met with their legislators to express grave concerns and demand a “no” vote. Despite the public outcry, Democrat legislators voted in favor.

Conservative Virginians must now fight the abortion lobby for the people’s vote, which would determine adoption of the amendment in November’s general election. 

Democrat Power Grab

The amendment is one of four proposed changes to the Virginia Constitution to pass the legislature in the first three days of the 60-day session. Other proposed amendments would restore voting rights for felons following completion of sentence, redefine marriage beyond one man and one woman, and redraw the congressional map, which was fast-tracked to a springtime vote.

Republican state Sen. Luther H. Cifers III called the constitutional amendment process “compromised,” as Democrats rushed to make “partisan agendas permanent” rather than serve the needs of the people. Democrats are taking full advantage of the blue wave that led to a two-chamber majority, plus now the state executive branch.

Radical and Vague

Though the redistricting amendment has warranted significant attention, the proposed abortion amendment should not be overlooked.

In states where similarly vague and expansive constitutional amendments have been codified, abortion has overwhelmed facilities, degraded women’s health care, and led to scores of safety violations. Americans United for Life said its Center for Client Safety has reviewed well over 100 abortion complaints in the last two years, including the case of an allegedly post-abortive woman left to wait for an ambulance on the ground outside a Planned Parenthood in Chicago late last year. What would have been called “back-alley” in a previous generation is becoming dangerously mainstream.

This approach to abortion is “hard to comprehend,” said GOP Virginia state Sen. Mark Peake. Democrats’ limitless support and determination to enshrine “vague language right into the Constitution” is senseless, “and yet there was no Democrat who was going to vote against it.”

Peake anticipates parental consent and other basic protections currently in Virginia law will be challenged by abortion advocates as unconstitutional if voters enshrine the amendment in the fall. They will “attack all the guardrails,” he said. 

A Virginia school placed under investigation for alleged abortion trafficking highlights the “horrific scandal” of Democrats’ fight to end parental rights in the state. 

In a moving floor speech before the House, Republican Del. Delores Oates recounted her own crisis pregnancy and challenged the amendment’s “vague, broad, and elastic” language. She reiterated constitutional lawyers’ concerns over the lack of “firm limits” and “clear standards” in the amendment, “resolving nothing while inviting endless litigation.”

“Once enshrined in our Constitution, these life and death questions won’t be decided by Virginians, but by judges,” Oates said. “That’s a heartbreaking shift of power, robbing us of our voice on the most profound of moral issues.”

A Southern Stronghold

Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Virginia has become a southern stronghold for abortion, drawing in women from more restrictive surrounding states and increasing the potential for more abortions through additional facilities. In 2024, the Richmond City Council transferred a city-owned building for a 10,000-square-foot Planned Parenthood center to the abortion goliath for $10, a move supported by limited public input.

Although maternal health care became a bipartisan focus under former Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin last session, women and children now fall under the shadow of radically pro-abortion Democrat Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who advocated for the abortion amendment during her campaign.

 A grassroots campaign to win voters will likely take center stage in the coming months.

“[The amendment] is now all about voter turnout,” Oates told me. “The other side is exploiting women in crisis scenarios. We, as conservative voters, need to start talking now. Not when the 45 days of voting begins.”

Ashley Bateman is a policy writer for The Heartland Institute. Her work has been featured in The Washington Times, The Daily Caller, The New York Post, The American Thinker, the Ascension Press blog, and numerous other publications. She previously worked as an adjunct scholar for The Lexington Institute and as editor, writer, and photographer for The Warner Weekly, a publication for the American military community in Bamberg, Germany. She and her brilliant engineer/scientist husband homeschool their six children.