Virginia: A State Destined to Set the Standard for Abortion Rights, for Better or Worse

Virginia is in the middle of a defining moment. One that will either advance the states reputation on reproductive rights, or force it backwards while furthering the agenda of a federal administration that is openly anti-abortion and polarizing toward women.

At first glance, Virginia appears to be turning a corner in favor of abortion access and reproductive health. In January, it became one of 18 states to announce plans to introduce proactive policies to support access to reproductive health care, and a month later the General Assembly passed a bill to allow women to access a 12-month supply of birth control the first time an unabashedly pro-choice piece of legislation passed our General Assembly in over a decade. Most recently, Gov. Terry McAuliffe vetoed a bill that would have cut funding to Planned Parenthood clinics. What's more, after years of effort, the Board of Health voted to rollback the impact of our unconstitutional abortion clinic shutdown law.

Despite this progress, Virginia teeters at a precipice between moving forward to expand abortion access statewide or regressing to the policies of the past. The General Assembly failed to advance a "Whole Woman's Health Act " that would have fully eliminated our unconstitutional abortion clinic shutdown law and brought the commonwealth into line with the Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt decision. Several funding restrictions , coupled with abortion stigma that runs rampant within the legislature, threaten the health and well being of Virginians. Against all moral and economic reasoning, Virginia has failed to expand Medicaid. State laws forbid public funding to be used for abortions except in the cases of life-endangerment, rape, incest or fetal impairment the same goes for insurance policies for public employees, as well as health plans offered under the Affordable Care Act. Such laws put undue burden for abortion access on the most marginalized members of our communities.

To make matters worse, Virginia requires women to endure state-directed counseling before an abortion, imposing an onerous 24-hour waiting period before they are able to have the procedure. And after all that, women who want an abortion are required to get an ultrasound from a medical provider who is then required to offer her the option of viewing the image.

Beyond legislative repression, people in Virginia are subjected to emotional scare tactics to reduce abortion access. Our state is home to 58 so-called crisis pregnancy centers three times the number of real,abortion-providing health centers. These fake clinics are backed anti-abortion institutions that can rake in tens of millions of dollars at the national level, many of them from publicly funded programs, without accountability to the public for the services they claim to provide. These centers masquerade as reliable sources of medical information and assistance for pregnant women, while instead manipulating women to forgo abortion.

Crisis pregnancy centers set up sham websites that even go so far as to imply that they provide abortions, tricking women into making an appointment, and then, pushing anti-abortion propaganda after they arrive. They use misleading locations and titles, such as AAA Women for Choice of Manassas , a crisis pregnancy center that has set up shop in Manassas, Va. where a real abortion clinic used to be in an attempt to fool women into thinking it performs the same medical procedures women had previously received there.

The dominance of so many fake clinics and anti-abortion schemes enforced at the state level, combined with the lack of access to comprehensive womens health centers in many portions of Virginia, forces women to go to great lengths to find safe and accessible abortion services.

Virginia stands at a moment of truth. Will we rise to the challenge, or will we regress under the pressure of abortion stigma and lawmakers who would rather put womens lives at risk than provide safe, affordable access to abortion?

We all must work boldly protect the rights of Virginians to make our own healthcare decisions by no longer accepting regressive policies and stances that have shamed, pressured and punished women seeking access to abortion.

We can do better.