GOP Hopes New Anti-Abortion Tactics Bring Better Results in Va. Legislative Races

As the only state in the South that has not enacted new abortion restrictions since the fall of Roe v. Wade, abortion has become perhaps the leading issue in Virginia’s high-stakes legislative races on Nov. 7, featuring in a blizzard of ads that are dominating the region's airwaves.

Republican lawmakers, who experts say are on the losing side of the abortion issue in a state President Biden carried in 2020, are now rallying around Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s call for a 15-week abortion ban as a supposed “consensus” position.

But whether or not that messaging is actually effective remains to be seen and represents a key test for a potential new message on abortion nationally as well as a crucial factor in races Republicans hope will give them control of all three branches of state government in Virginia.

“There's this idea that the 15-week ban would be a compromise,” said Rachel Rebouché, a law professor and Dean of Temple University Beasley School of Law, "but I think what I would be looking for is if that message actually carries the day for a state that voted for Biden.”

Adding the stakes is the concern for some Democrats and abortion advocates that a 15-week ban might just be the first step in a more aggressive restriction.

“He [Youngkin] can say 15 weeks as much as he wants,” said national communications director for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee Abhi Rahman. “He can say it until he is blue in the face. But the fact of the matter is if they have all three branches of government, it could be a lot worse than that.”

Similarly, Rebouché posited that there’s a possibility that a 15-week ban could lead to tighter restrictions in the state. “They haven't offered a justification for why this restriction would be so very different than any other that they could propose,”she said.

Republican candidate John Stirrup, running for House of Delegates, for example, has said in May of this year that he would support a “100 percent ban,” according to reporting from the Washington Post. And GOP state Senate candidate Dave Suetterlein supported a bill that would have enacted a near-total ban in the state, per NBC News. 

Virginia’s legislature races come against the backdrop of a recent string of anti-abortion losses. In 2022, reproductive rights amendments moved forward in all of the six states in which they appeared on the ballot. And recent polling from the Wason Center for Civic Leadership at Christopher Newport University shows that the majority of Virginians support the state’s current abortion law.

As it stands now, abortion is legal in Virginia through the second trimester of pregnancy. But if Republicans take control of both chambers of the Virginia General assembly (Republicans currently control the House of Delegates and Democrats control the state Senate), Youngkin will try to push through a 15-week abortion ban—an effort that has been previously blocked by the Senate. 

Youngkin’s PAC launched a $1.4 million ad campaign earlier this month, focused on his supposed “reasonable” stance on abortion. “Here is the truth. There is no ban. Virginia Republicans support a reasonable 15-week limit with exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother,” the ad says. 

To some extent, Younkin has successfully gotten most of the Republicans in key districts behind the 15-week ban, but again, explained J. Miles Coleman, Associate Editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, the question is still whether or not Republicans in power try to take that ban further.

“To his [Youngkin’s] credit, he has at least got most of the Republicans in the key districts behind his 15-week ban,” Coleman said. “I think what a lot of the Democrats have been weary of is, okay, Youngkin wants this 15-week ban now. But if Republicans actually get power, will they go further?”

In a statement to The Messenger, Kaitlin Makuski, political director of anti-abortion organization Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said: “More than 60% of Virginians support Gov. Youngkin's call to protect unborn babies at 15 weeks when they can feel pain, and Republican candidates have made it clear they stand with the Governor's commonsense and compassionate 15-week limit. Candidates across this country should take note of how Republicans in Virginia are leading on the issue of life by going on offense and exposing the left's radical abortion agenda."

David Cohen, professor of law at Drexel University, calls Youngkin’s push for a 15-week ban an example of Republicans doing whatever they can to get through an abortion ban, knowing that they are on the losing side of the issue “in terms of popular view.”

Republican lawmakers, he pointed out, in states across the country have failed to block reproductive rights ballot initiatives, but they are still attempting to push through anti-abortion agendas through a legislative strategy.

“They're trying through representative democracy when they're failing through direct democracy because where they're failing is through the ballot initiatives,” he said. “But they're still winning in electoral democracy because of gerrymandering and because of people hoping that they'll vote for Republicans on other issues.” 

In Virginia, Cohen added, he is confident that an abortion rights initiative would win by a landslide. “But that's direct democracy, a single issue, and that's just totally different,” he said. 

And if a 15-week ban is possible, Cohen says it’ll likely mean that Republicans will look to each individual state’s political makeup to determine how far they can go in terms of anti-abortion policy. 

“I don't think getting a majority in Virginia, if that happens, is going to mean anything for a legislative majority in Oklahoma or North Carolina,” he said. “There's no magic number here. It's just what they can get out of the electoral margins they have with the goal being to ban as much abortion as possible.”

It’s all “political calculus” based on the electoral margins in each state and the population’s general political leaning, he said.