North Grounds Reacts to VA Abortion Amendment

This November, Virginians will be voting on three proposed amendments to the state constitution. Two of these amendments will (1) remove the ban on same sex marriage from the Virginia constitution and (2) reinstate felons’ right to vote after being released from prison, respectively, but the one that has been getting the most attention at North Grounds is targeted at abortion. November’s ballot will ask voters whether they would like to “(i) protect the freedom to make personal decisions about prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion, miscarriage management, and fertility care; (ii) protect doctors, nurses, and patients from being punished for these decisions; and (iii) allow for restrictions on access to abortion during the third trimester of pregnancy except when the patient's health is at risk or the pregnancy cannot survive?”[1]

The proposed amendment has stirred discussion on campus. On Tuesday, anti-abortion student group “Advocates for Life” hosted a speaker event with Josh Hetzler, Executive Director & Chief Counsel of the Richmond-based Founding Freedoms Law Center. FFLC is the legal arm of the lobbying group Family Foundation of Virginia, a conservative “non-profit, non-partisan, faith-based organization” that “advocate[s] for policies based on Biblical principles that enable families to flourish at the state and local level.”[2] Meanwhile, pro-abortion-rights student group “If/When/How” ran counter-programming at a table in Hunton Andrew Kurth hall.

Hetzler discussed the text of the amendment, which creates a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom” that includes “prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, abortion care, miscarriage management, and fertility care.”[3] Hetzler called this “very intentionally calculated and broad.” He charged that this proposed amendment would extend to all behavior and emerging technologies around reproduction, including IVF, embryo freezing, surrogacy, designer babies, and transgender medical procedures, which Hetzler implicated as “sterilisation.” He also said it encompasses the sexual behavior of minors. “[If the amendment passes] statutory rape laws are gone in Virginia.”

Hetzler also said that the amendment, which prohibits regulation of third trimester abortions so long as a physician judges that it’s medically necessary to protect the “life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual” means that “there is no limit on third trimester abortions.” And, he continued, the provision that says the Commonwealth shall not take adverse action against an individual for getting or aiding someone in exercising this freedom means that if someone performs an improper or unlicensed abortion procedure, there is no way to punish them. “What I’m saying sounds scary—like fearmongering—but if you read the language, what I’m saying is objectively true. I’m really trying to speak as a legal authority. I can tell you all the reasons why abortion is bad, but I’m trying to tell you what the law will do.” Hetzler came off as a sincere and impassioned speaker. But it’s not clear his interpretation is entirely correct..

Izzie Wilcox ’28, President of pro-abortion-rights student organization “If/When/How” spoke with the Law Weekly about her understanding of the amendment. “The bill is trying to reproduce what Virginia’s abortion laws already are . . . you can seek an abortion through your first trimester [without doctor approval], with consent of a doctor in your second trimester, and most [doctors] will not allow [an abortion] in the third trimester, unless health of the mother is at risk or the fetus isn’t viable,” said Wilcox. Hetzler passed out a freedom foundation flyer at the Advocates for Life event, and Wilcox reacted to it as she spoke: “These inflammatory ‘informative’ things don’t like to discuss the role a doctor plays—and a doctor plays a huge role in all of these decisions . . . basically no doctor in the U.S. is going to have you abort a child at nine months that’s fully healthy, where there’s no harm to you. If a woman is pregnant through the ninth month, she wants that child.”[4] Wilcox did not think the proposed amendment was intended to or would reach non-reproduction-related transgender medical procedures, as Hetzler does, but did agree it would encompass reproduction-related activities outside of abortion, such as IVF, surrogacy, and the freezing of eggs and sperm.

The amendment does make some substantive changes to current Virginia abortion law. Under current Virginia law, third-trimester abortions are allowed only if a primary physician and two consulting physicians agree that continuation of the pregnancy is likely to result in death or will “substantially and irremediably impair the mental or physical health of the woman.”[5] The proposed amendment drops the number of physicians from three to one and broadens the exception by changing “likely to substantially and irremediably impair” health, to “protects.” Additionally, Virginia currently conditions an unemancipated minor's abortion on parental authorization.[6] As the amendment extends the “fundamental right to reproductive freedom” to “every individual,” presumably including minors, it could present a serious constitutional challenge to the parental consent requirement, but does not obviously do away with it. Hetzler’s more outlandish claims, that the law eliminates malpractice claims against abortion performers, safety and consent standards, and statutory rape, appear to be demonstrably false under current malpractice laws or an inconceivable application of the potential amendment. However, one could see a world where some Bostock-like calculus is used to extend the right to reproductive freedom to transgender surgeries and procedures. Many of these questions will have to be hashed out in litigation.

Hetzler estimated that the amendment is nearly certain to pass, especially given the referendum results in far-more-red states like Ohio, Kansas, and Missouri among others. He gave the Freedom Foundation’s lawsuit, challenging the incomplete and allegedly misleading language on the referendum ballot, a 20% chance of success depending on if they can get in front of the Virginia Supreme Court on appeal, before conservative judges are replaced by liberal ones. Hetzler opined, “If this amendment passes and we’re not successful in the lawsuit, it’s effectively over in Virginia. We never stop fighting for life. We can never do that. And you don’t just fight for life in the legal realm, but at pregnancy centers, and in your personal life, and by changing the culture. . . . But if this passes, it’ll be game over, effectively.” Wilcox had this to say about the amendment: “It’s really not as divisive as people think.”

Author: Bradley Berklich (jqr9gh)

[1] November 2026 Proposed Constitutional Amendments and Local Referenda, VA Dept. of Elections, https://www.elections.virginia.gov/casting-a-ballot/candidate-list/november-2026-proposed-constitutional-amendments/ (last visited Sept. 25, 2026).

[2] Who We Are, The Family Foundation, https://www.familyfoundation.org/whoweare (last visited Sept. 25, 2026).

[3] November 2026 Proposed Constitutional Amendments and Local Referenda, Va. Dept. of Elections, https://www.elections.virginia.gov/casting-a-ballot/candidate-list/november-2026-proposed-constitutional-amendments/ (last visited Sept. 27, 2026).

[4] However, the third trimester starts roughly at 6¾ months.

[5] Va. Code Ann. § 18.2-74.

[6] Va. Code Ann. § 16.1-241.