Ghazala Hashmi speaks out: ‘I’m so thankful my doctor could save my life’

This story first appeared in Dogwood

When Virginia Democratic state senator Ghazala Hashmi pledges to support Virginia’s constitutional amendment protecting reproductive freedom, she knows very personally how critical that amendment is to every pregnant woman and their loved ones in the Commonwealth.

“In my second pregnancy I was carrying twins,” she explains in an interview with Dogwood. “They passed away in utero but my body didn’t expel the fetuses and in those (types) of cases, we’ve already seen horrific situations where individuals whose bodies don’t complete the miscarriage in some states go into septic shock before the physicians can actually perform the necessary care.

Thankfully for Hashmi, currently a senator representing the 15th district and running for lieutenant governor of Virginia, the Commonwealth did not have an abortion ban in place—and still doesn’t.

Her doctor was able to perform the necessary D&C (dilation and curettage) procedure, which removed both fetuses and prevented a deathly sepsis infection from developing.

By contrast, three young, healthy pregnant women in Texas died needlessly when hospital physicians delayed providing D&Cs to clear the remains of their dead fetuses after miscarrying.

The lieutenant governor candidate is now the mother of two grown daughters. She tells Dogwood that she experienced four “intensely complicated” pregnancies.

“I found out when I was pregnant with my first daughter that I suffered from an underlying issue, which was lupus,” she explains. “What happens with that underlying condition is that the body begins to attack the pregnancy.”

Hashmi says she was forced to stay on bed rest for three months, and that while she carried her daughter almost to full term, the newborn barely weighed 4 lbs and 14 ounces.

It was in her second pregnancy that she tragically lost her twins and required a D&C to remove the fetuses from her uterus.

Then in her third pregnancy, she began to hemorrhage profusely during a miscarriage, and to stop the bleeding her doctor had no choice but to perform another D&C.

“We have seen in some states women being forced to bleed out and pray that their physicians can take care of them in time,” she says.

Abortion bans aren’t just dangerous for every pregnant person in a state, she says—they are also traumatic for physicians.

“I’m just so thankful that I had these pregnancies at a time and in a state where my physician didn’t actually have to call a hospital attorney to gain approval to do the procedures that she knew were going to save my life.”

Up to 20% of pregnancies end in a natural miscarriage, and it’s not uncommon for women to need medical help to complete their miscarriages safely. Today, abortion bans stand in the way of what used to be standard treatment.

“We’re putting our medical professionals in untenable situations.They know that their fundamental responsibility is to care for their patients and to provide lifesaving procedures. But now they are forced to watch their patients suffer and come near death before they can take action,” Hashmi says.

“This is not the way that a developed nation ought to be treating and taking care of its people.”

When Hashmi became pregnant for the fourth time, she and her OB-GYN knew that it would once again be a “pregnancy of crisis.”

“I knew that I was probably going to deliver early so we took as many precautions as we could and I delivered my second daughter at 32 weeks,” she tells Dogwood. “But because of the precautions, she was born healthy and stayed in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for two weeks, and then was able to come home.” 

Now Hashmi wants to ensure that no pregnant woman in the Commonwealth ever loses her life or is subjected to needless suffering because doctors and hospital administrators are too terrified to intervene. 

If elected to the office of lieutenant governor this coming November 4, she could be in the position—as president of the Senate—to provide a tie-breaking vote to move Virginia’s reproductive freedom constitutional amendment to its final step before enshrinement.

That’s because the constitutional amendment has already passed a vote by both houses in the current Democratic-majority General Assembly.

If Virginians once again elect a Democratic majority in the House of Delegates this November, and they approve the reproductive freedom amendment for a second time in January 2026—as required by the Commonwealth’s constitution—then it will be added to the ballot for voters to approve in the November 2026 election.

At that point it will be up to a simple majority of Virginians to pass the amendment and have it enshrined into the state’s constitution.

The Commonwealth’s current lieutenant governor, Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, opposes the amendment.

Earle-Sears has called abortion “another form of slavery,” and defaced the reproductive freedom bill by scrawling a hand-written note on it that read: “I am morally opposed to this bill; no protection for the child.”

The bill’s language guarantees that “every individual has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom, including the ability to make and carry out decisions relating to one’s own prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, abortion, miscarriage management and fertility care.”

“An individual’s right to reproductive freedom shall not be, directly or indirectly, denied, burdened or infringed upon.”

Hashmi points out that the amendment doesn’t only protect the abortion rights of individual Virginians—it also ensures access to a “full spectrum” of good health care coverage including “prenatal, postnatal and contraception care.”

In a clear contrast for voters, John Reid, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor opposing Hashmi, has been emphatic that he would vote against the reproductive freedom constitutional amendment.

Like Earle-Sears, Reid also compared abortion to slavery. He wrote in a post on Facebook: “I think it’s absolutely awful and still must be challenged just like accepted slavery was continually challenged over a century ago…but today it’s clear that huge swaths of the population and especially women believe that being able to kill their baby any time before it’s born is a private and personal right.”

Hashmi calls out Reid for his claims that Democrats support “day of birth abortions.”

Virginia law allows legal abortions through the second trimester. After that, an abortion can only be performed in a hospital with verification from three physicians that a pregnant woman is at risk of death, or that the physical or mental health of the patient will be “substantially and irremediably impaired.”

However, if the fetus exhibits “visible evidence of viability” then measures of support must be available and utilized. 

“My opponent, John Reid, has already stressed that he does not support the constitutional amendment,” says Hashmi. “We absolutely need individuals in place that are going to fight for reproductive health care and in doing so, we’re actually fighting for lives.”

Hashmi wants Virginians to recognize that they are in the last southern state that protects “access to safe and legal abortion, and given the dismantling of Roe v. Wade, it really has fallen on state leadership and state governments to provide those protections.”

“Sadly, we’ve seen so many of our sister states in the southern region moving to not only curtail medical access to abortion care, but to stop it altogether. We’ve seen immense tragedies happen with women dying and becoming seriously ill. That’s something we cannot allow to happen in Virginia.”