In addition to choosing congressional and state representatives in Tuesday’s midterms, voters in Virginia backed a ballot measure that removes restrictions on abortion in the first and second trimesters and effectively removes restrictions on abortion through the third trimester, when the vast majority of unborn infants can survive outside the womb.
The Amendment.
Virginia’s Question 1, a legislatively referred constitutional amendment, secured roughly 62 percent support. The measure establishes a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” including abortion, with the state barred from penalizing abortionists or women who procure abortions. A carve-out was added allowing the state “to regulate abortion after fetal viability,” but with the crucial exception that such regulations cannot be imposed “when an abortion is medically indicated to protect the life or physical or mental health” of the “pregnant individual.”
Edward Whelan, Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, noted ahead of the midterms that “For many abortionists, that standard will be no limit at all,” quoting the retired third-trimester abortionist Warren Hern, who famously said that he would “certify that any pregnancy is a threat to a woman’s life and could cause grievous injury to her physical health.”
Similarly, the American Psychological Association’s position is that “people who are denied abortions are more likely to experience higher levels of anxiety, lower life satisfaction and lower self-esteem compared with those who are able to obtain abortions,” so in practice anyone who requests a third trimester abortion will be entitled to one on “mental health” grounds.
Physicians’ Warnings.
Medical professionals who opposed the measure warned that the mental health exception leaves little practical room for limits once a pregnancy reaches the third trimester. Dr. Edward Springel, a physician who has previously supported certain abortion protections, noted that “the third trimester begins at 28 weeks. At 28 weeks, 95 percent of babies survive outside of the mother’s womb,” so in the case of a mother experiencing severe physical or mental strain, the appropriate response would not be aborting the baby but inducing labor, so “the baby could be delivered alive, and then we would have two living patients.”
Media Language.
Raheem J. Kassam, Editor-in-Chief of The National Pulse, highlighted the gap between the amendment’s practical effect and the descriptions used by most corporate media outlets and fact-checkers such as Snopes, which gloss over or deny the fact that the amendment effectively legalizes abortion up to birth with a single doctor’s sign-off on flimsy, subjective pretexts.
“What you notice about this story is that almost none of the major corporate media outlets report on what it actually is. It’s abortion up to birth,” Kassam wrote on X.
“But they all just say ‘Virginia protects reproductive rights.’ They wouldn’t use these euphemisms if they were proud of such things. The truth is they all know it’s demonic so they try and mask it in pseudo-science/healthcare babble. It’s murder. Just say it. Virginia legalised the murder of a baby in the womb, right up until birth.”
What you notice about this story is that almost none of the major corporate media outlets report on what it actually is.
It’s abortion up to birth.
But they all just say “Virginia protects reproductive rights.”
They wouldn’t use these euphemisms if they were proud of such… https://t.co/Q0NeRjZdMP
— Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) November 4, 2026
Consequences.
Prior Virginia law already allowed abortions in the third trimester, but required at least three physicians to certify that continuing the pregnancy would likely cause death or substantial, irremediable harm to the woman’s health.
The new constitutional standard replaces that multi-physician requirement with a single, potentially ideologically motivated physician’s “professional judgment,” while removing the higher standard that the pregnancy must be deemed “likely [to] result in the death of the woman or substantially and irredeemably impair the mental or physical health of the woman” in order to be terminated.
Court challenges to the certification of Question 1 are expected in the coming weeks. Due to the fact that the change is now entrenched in the state constitution, any attempt to restore multi-physician certification requirements, facility standards, or clearer limits on third-trimester procedures will face a higher legal bar than ordinary legislation.
