Stark contrast between Spanberger, Earle-Sears when it comes to Virginians’ reproductive freedom

This story first appeared in Dogwood

The Republican nominee for governor of Virginia has a few opinions when it comes to women’s health.

Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears—who the Virginia GOP has chosen as their candidate in the Nov. 4, 2025 gubernatorial election—has called abortion “Black genocide,” and complained “that her fellow Black mothers were not sufficiently pro-life.” She’s also been found to repeatedly spread misinformation that babies are being aborted up to the moment of birth, and murdered after birth. 

Earle-Sears supported Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s failed 15-week abortion ban proposal for Virginia, which voters rejected definitively in the state’s 2023 election, and she said in a 2022 radio interview that women “need to make our choices before we’re pregnant, not, you know, after. You already made a choice.”

Which makes it especially notable that she doesn’t support abortion in the case of rape or incest.

In contrast, the Democratic nominee running against Earle-Sears for governor, Abigail Spanberger, has vowed to stand up for the reproductive rights of every Virginia woman and pregnant person.

Virginia: The last hope for abortion in the South

Abortion is currently legal in Virginia through the end of the second trimester—approximately 27 weeks and six days of gestation. After that, abortions can still be performed in medical emergencies which threaten a woman’s life or could cause her physical or mental impairment. 

Spanberger, a former three-term congresswoman who represented Virginia’s 7th Congressional district, supports protecting women’s right to make health care decisions with their doctors.

“I’m a mother, I have three daughters and fundamentally I do not believe that as an individual or a lawmaker I have a right to tell other women what choices they should make,” she told Dogwood in an exclusive interview.

“And I’ll tell you, across my campaigns—particularly in 2022 after the fall of Roe and after the Dobbs decision—I heard it across the board from men, from women, from grandparents, to young people who were horrified at the realities that we were already starting to see on the ground here in Virginia.”

Republican Gov. Youngkin, whose term ends this year, twice vetoed the Right to Contraception Act, which was passed by the General Assembly. His most recent veto was just this past May.

Earle-Sears, who was elected lieutenant governor in 2021 along with Youngkin, also voted against the bill.

The Right to Contraception Act would have protected the rights of Virginians to obtain contraceptives and information about contraception, as well as the right to provide contraceptives and contraception information.

Spanberger has pledged that if elected governor, she would immediately sign the Act into law. “In 2025 every Virginian ought to have the right to purchase any contraception that they need or want. It shouldn’t be up to politicians,” she told members of the commonwealth. “It certainly shouldn’t be up to the governor…any person has a right to make those personal decisions on their own.”

Refusing to support access to contraception was Youngkin’s latest effort to curtail women’s reproductive freedom in the state.

However, his biggest misread of voters was his conviction that residents would support a 15-week abortion ban, which he pushed in his campaign to lead a Republican takeover of the General Assembly in the 2023 elections.

Spanberger, however, who dove into politics after a career at the CIA, was not surprised that Virginians rejected Youngkin’s campaign to limit abortion access.

“The reason that our General Assembly is currently in majority Democratic hands is because they pledged to move forward in legislating to protect a woman’s right to an abortion,” she said. “Protecting rights and protecting privacy is extraordinarily popular in Virginia and across the country.”

That popularity was reflected when both the Senate and the House of Delegates passed the first stage of an amendment to the Virginia constitution earlier this year, to protect “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 care, miscarriage management and fertility care.

Spanberger released a statement supporting the victory: “Virginians deserve the certainty of knowing that their rights are protected in the Virginia Constitution. Our Commonwealth needs to be a place where Virginians’ right to choose, right to privacy, right to access IVF and right to contraception are guaranteed.”

Her opponent, Earle-Sears, by contrast, scrawled a written objection across the bill, saying “I am morally opposed to this bill; no protection for the child.” 

If Virginians disagree with Earle-Sears and re-elect a Democratic majority Senate and House of Delegates this coming November, both Houses will need to re-approve the abortion amendment in 2026.

Then everyday Virginians will get their turn to approve the amendment when it appears on a ballot in November 2026. If the abortion amendment passes, it will finally become part of the commonwealth’s Constitution.

Sixty-two percent of Virginians support this constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion in the state, according to a poll by Virginia Commonwealth University.

Abortions in the state were up over 16% between 2023 and 2024, as every other state in the South passed extreme abortion bans. Planned Parenthood in Virginia recorded a leap in desperate patients coming from outside the state, from 2% to 30%.

“We are the last state in the South not to have imposed more restrictive laws in place after the Dobbs decision,” Spanberger told Dogwood. “And we’re watching what is happening in neighboring states.”

“And certainly the whole world is watching what’s happening in places like Texas, where women are being turned away from essential care and women are forced to face the threat of losing their own lives and of losing their fertility. This is very real.”