Out-of-state share of Planned Parenthood Virginia patients rose as high as 25% to 30%
Virginians will vote Tuesday on Ballot Question No. 1, the reproductive freedom amendment that, if approved, would enshrine in the state’s Constitution the right to bodily autonomy — including the right to make and carry out decisions about prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, abortion care, miscarriage management and fertility care. Abortion is legal in Virginia up to 26 weeks and six days of pregnancy, but the right is not constitutionally protected.
The measure follows a state history of altering abortion restrictions over the past decades. The Virginia House rejected a 2024 bill that would have instituted a near-total abortion ban, and current state law does not explicitly provide citizens with the right to reproductive freedom, nor does it explicitly prohibit certain types of health procedures or decisions.
The vote comes as abortion access remains a contentious issue that varies by state. In the country’s southern states, abortion is either illegal or highly restricted, with six-to-12-week bans, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Kenda Denia, founder and executive director of Birth In Color, a group that works in reproductive justice and maternal health equity, said she believes Virginia can “set the tone” for reproductive care for the rest of the South. “It’s going to give the other advocates a lot more hope that ‘Hey, we can actually do this and do this well,’” Denia said. “They look at Virginia as a southern state, even though people love to say that Virginia is progressive, but we can follow the steps to help Virginia to be progressive.”
Jamie Lockhart, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia, said the state’s patient population has already shifted as other states tightened access. Before the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, about 3% to 4% of their abortion patients were coming from out of state, Lockhart said. Within a year of that decision — and especially after Florida’s six-week requirement took effect — that number shot up to over 20%, with numbers as high as 25% to 30% of patients coming from out of state.
“If this doesn’t pass, the biggest danger is that there is a future of unfriendly anti-abortion legislature that passes abortion bans like we’ve seen in states across the South and states across the country,” Lockhart said.
The amendment also faces a planned legal challenge. A plaintiff represented by the Family Foundation plans to challenge the measure, if it passes, in a court hearing Nov. 13, alleging that the referendum’s process was not properly filed and that the ballot language was misleading.
Opponents include the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, which contends the amendment would add “extreme” abortion laws to the state’s Constitution, making future reversal of the law difficult. The diocese also argues against government intervention in general, a position with which Leesburg, Va., resident Colleen Steedly agrees.
Leesburg, Va., resident Colleen Steedly, 32, a small business owner, said she voted “no” on Question No. 1 in early voting because of her strong Christian beliefs, which include that life begins at conception. “For me, morality is always the biggest thing,” Steedly said. “Most people vote with their pockets, but my belief in God and my morality comes first.”
Gainesville, Va., attorney Adelle LaRue Settle said she views Virginia as the “last bastion” of the South and hopes people vote “yes” to ensure the stable reproductive care access that she sought out in her past. Settle said she relied on Planned Parenthood for birth control and her pap smear, and when she became pregnant with a partner who did not want children, she went to the Washington, D.C., chapter to obtain an abortion.
Living in Northern Virginia in 2012, Settle said pregnancy termination required a 24-hour waiting period and a transabdominal ultrasound, and targeted regulation of abortion providers, or TRAP laws, imposed strict, hospital-grade building and operational standards on existing abortion clinics. Confident in her decision based on law school debt, lack of paid family leave and a partner who did not want a child, Settle said she obtained the earliest available surgical procedure.
“I waited the week and then went to D.C. and had everything taken care of in one day, instead of having to go through all the hoops,” Settle said. “That would have been far more traumatic and upsetting in Virginia at the time.”
Settle is now happily married with an 11-year-old daughter. She said she believes the law in Virginia currently is “OK” but wants providers to be protected from legal consequences when carrying out abortions, which she said the reproductive freedom amendment provides. “I don’t want anyone to lose their job, potentially their license or suffer professional consequences for doing what they think is right,” Settle said. “I think that will expand access to reproductive health care because it’ll mean that doctors feel a little safer to help women make their own medical decisions.”
Many local advocates said they believe Virginians want these protections statewide. “I actually am not going to worry about it not passing because I am one of those people that is like, ‘it’s going to pass,’ because everyone, no matter what you stand for, knows that reproductive freedom is a bipartisan issue,” Denia said. “And so you have to really think about your daughters and your sisters.”