Virginia woke up this morning to the morning after. Virginia Amendment 1 passed on Tuesday, writing a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom” into our state’s Bill of Rights.
WJLA reported that the Associated Press projected passage at 9:01 p.m. Unofficial returns reported by Cardinal News show about 62 percent yes to 38 percent no.
The State Board of Elections is scheduled to certify the state results on December 7. News reports also say a challenge will be heard in Tazewell County Circuit Court on November 13.
Dear Christian, hear me as a watchman on the wall: “So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel” (Ezekiel 33:7). This is a day of grief for Virginia.
What Virginia Amendment 1 Actually Says
Words matter, so begin with what the amendment (HJ1) says. It protects decisions about “prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, abortion care, miscarriage management, and fertility care.” Any limit must be “justified by a compelling state interest achieved by the least restrictive means” (strict scrutiny).
That interest is defined narrowly: maintaining or improving the health of the person seeking care, without infringing on her “autonomous decision making.” The unborn child is not named as an interest at all.
In the third trimester, the state may regulate abortion. However, it may not prohibit one that, in the professional judgment of “a physician,” is “medically indicated to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual,” or when a physician judges the fetus is not viable. The amendment states no further gestational cutoff for those exceptions.
By contrast, current law (Va. Code § 18.2-74) requires the physician and two consulting physicians to certify a third-trimester abortion.
Those are the texts. Here is my conviction: I believe it opens the door to late-term abortion with almost nothing left standing in the way.
Whose Freedom Is Missing?
Abortion sits beside childbirth and prenatal care as if they were the same kind of thing. The word “fetus” appears only once in the whole section. That one word is the child.
Yet George Mason’s 1776 Declaration of Rights still opens Article I, Section 1 of our Constitution, naming “the enjoyment of life and liberty” among our inherent rights. Life is named first. I believe government has a duty to protect it.
I believe the new section is deception, and the deception is very old. Jesus called Satan “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). In Eden, he began with a question about words (Genesis 3:1), and he still dresses death in the language of freedom.
To be fair, many yes voters were thinking of women facing frightening medical crises, and I do not doubt them. The charge falls on the framing and the enemy behind it, not on our neighbors. Whatever voters intended, the lives at stake are real.
How Many Babies Will Die?
No one can honestly say. But God knows every one.
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb… Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me…” (Psalm 139:13, 16)
God formed David and numbered his days before his first breath. By the third trimester, that child has arms and legs, fingers and toes, and a beating heart. Not one will be forgotten by Him.
What You Can Do About Virginia Amendment 1 Today
The exceptions deserve scrutiny, but help cannot wait until the third trimester. In CDC data for 2022, about 93 percent of reported abortions happened at or before 13 weeks. That is where the church can help, before a woman feels she must decide alone.
Here is your one step this week. Use Care Net’s center locator to find a Christ-centered pregnancy center near you. Call the center, ask for one specific need you can meet, and meet it.
“Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute” (Proverbs 31:8). In A Plea to the Pews, that meant a vote. Today it means a phone call.
The Last Word Is Not Richmond’s
Pastors, as I pleaded in A Warning to the Watchmen, we have seen what happens when the church stays silent. If we go quiet now, that silence is ours to answer for.
And yet the Lord who commands the warning holds out mercy: to the woman who has had an abortion, to the doctor who performs them, and to every Virginian who voted yes. “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezekiel 33:11).
Nothing I write can turn a heart toward life. Only the Spirit who raised Christ from the dead can do that. But the God who knits each child together in the womb can still knit a Commonwealth’s conscience back together, one mother and one child at a time.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV).
If you are pregnant and need help, call Care Net’s Pregnancy Decision Line at 1-877-791-5475.
