Experts say a proposed amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in Virginia’s constitution would not prevent the General Assembly from regulating health and safety. That’s contrary to an anti-amendment campaign’s central claim.
For years, proponents of abortion access warned of a rise in underground or unsafe abortions if the procedure were outlawed.History shows that many who wished to terminate a pregnancy did sobefore it was deemed a constitutional right in 1973, but often in unregulated and more dangerous conditions.
Now abortion opponents have turned that argument on its head, saying the “unlimited abortion amendment” would trump the General Assembly’s ability to regulate the procedure, and could lead to unlicensed providers operating in unsanitary and unsafe facilities.
Here’s what the amendment behind Ballot Question 1 says:
Amy McInerney, director of the Catholic Diocese of Arlington’s Office of Marriage, Family and Respect Life, said duringa recent interview with VPM Newsthat the amendment puts “women’s reproductive health care at grave risk.”
“As a medical consumer, I want to make sure that I have a trained, licensed provider for any medical procedure in a facility that is clean and has met the healthcare regulations,” McInerney said. “This opens the door to all of that going away because it impacts the General Assembly’s ability to regulate, and I don’t think most Virginians would be comfortable with that.”
McInerney said the amendment’s language is not specific enough.
“I’m in favor of ‘autonomous decision making,’ but what does it mean in the law? We don’t know,” she said, saying the term wasn’t properly defined. “There are so many vague, undefined terms in this resolution that I think Virginians should pause and look at it because there, I believe, will be unintended negative consequences flowing from enactment.”
Lois Shepherd, a professor at the University of Virginia Law school who studies medical ethics and health law including reproductive rights, said that while any new constitutional amendment could conflict with existing state law, it’s often up to the courts to interpret what they mean.
She added that Ballot Question 1, if passed, wouldn’t prevent future state regulation.
“I don’t see anything honestly in the language of the amendment that would compromise the state’s ability to regulate abortion like it regulates other medical care.” Shepherd told VPM News in an interview. “It just doesn’t allow the state to make an exception, to pull abortion care or reproductive care out, and say we’re going to have special regulations with respect to this, because usually, or often, history shows us those are really tainted with a different agenda.”
Since the 2022Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organizationdecision, which overturnedRoe v. Wade, Virginia had not enacted any legislative change to abortion access. Abortion has remained legal in the first and second trimesters, with abortions during the third trimester to be approved by three doctors in limited instances.
Many abortion care regulations in Virginia wererepealedafter Democrats took control of the legislature in 2020, beforeDobbs. They includedregulations that put the same, more stringent regulations of hospitals, on clinics that perform abortion.
For any new or existing regulations, the amendment would define state interest as “compelling only if it is for the limited purpose of maintaining or improving the health of an individual seeking care, consistent with accepted clinical standards of care and evidence-based medicine, and does not infringe on that individual’s autonomous decision making.”
In other words, Virginia has to prove new regulations are medically necessary, with the help of scientific studies and expert medical witnesses.
“If that sounds like a lot, it really isn’t,” said Jessie Hill, director of the Reproductive Rights Law Initiative at Case Western Reserve Law School in Cleveland. “Any time there’s a constitutional right, that’s kind of how it works. That means the state is not allowed to interfere with people’s exercise of that right unless they can show they have a really good basis for doing that.”
In 2023, Ohioans voted to add abortion rights to the state constitution with an amendment similar to Virginia’s.Hill said three years out, the amendment has not prompted lawsuits challenging its impact on health and safety regulations.
“What we have seen in Ohio is litigation challenging medically unnecessary and unwarranted restrictions,” she said.
Many states, including Virginia, have passed TRAP laws — which are medical regulations that target abortion providers.
“It’s really just a barrier that is masquerading as a health regulation,” Hill said. Ohio laws, including a 24-hour waiting period for an abortion, continue to face legal challenges in the state.
McInerney was not available for comment on this story, but the Catholic Diocese of Arlington connected VPM News with Ed Whelan, a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC.
He said that the proposed amendment is written in a way that allows for “abortion clinics” to self regulate.
“When it says consistent with accepted clinical standards of care, the standards are being set by the abortion clinics themselves. I don’t think this is any sort of any sort of limit,” he said.
Whelan also pointed to a provision changing a requirement for three doctors to approve a third trimester abortion to only requiring one, “in other words, the doctor doing the abortion. It’s clear that this is basically taking away any check at all on [Virginia’s] health exception.”
Two committees have emerged as vehicles for the health and safety arguments against the amendment:Virginia Medical Professionals for Women’s SafetyandVirginians for Safe Reproductive Policy.
Virginians for Safe Reproductive Policy has raised about $73,000, according tocampaign finance filingsreviewed Tuesday. It bills itself as a diverse coalition of people raising awareness about the potential dangers of the amendment. It’s two biggest donors are The Virginia Catholic conference, and the anti-abortion group Virginia Society for Human Life, another organization with Catholic roots.
But McInerney, with the Catholic diocese, contends her position as an employee of the church is secondary to the health and safety concerns.
“I have not made one faith-based argument against this amendment in our conversation,” she said. “Virginians don’t have to agree about abortion to come together to stop this potential harm.”
Read more 2026 coverage from the Virginia Elections Collaborative.
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