The deception and danger of “Reproductive Freedom Amendments”

By Robert G. Marshall ( bio - articles - email ) | May 13, 2026

Secularist politicians, primarily state and federal elected Democrats, seem personally and constitutionally driven to turn what Christian Ethics previously held to be private vices into public virtues, if not actual legal obligations, which are to be funded with public money. Here I will analyze these efforts which have occupied public discussion in the last several years as both ordinary legislation and voter-passed amendments to State Constitutions.

The purpose is to alert Americans who have the gift of Faith or a personal understanding of the Natural Law, so that they can counter the tactics, policies, and actions of those who are advancing what they mislabel as “Reproductive Freedom”, but which undermines the blessings of natural birth, children, and a well-ordered liberty within the social order. For the intentionally misnamed, deceptively promoted and heavily funded “Reproductive Freedom Constitutional Amendments” (RFCAs) to state constitutions have been enacted by voter referenda in ten states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New York, Ohio, and Vermont (as of November 2025).¹

Note that the prolife side won in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota, while Virginia, Missouri and Nevada will be seeing similar pro “reproductive freedom” constitutional amendment efforts on the ballot in November, 2026. Fortunately, the fabricated RFCAs have enough in common that to deal with one of these jerry-rigged nihilistic legal enactments is to cover 90-95% of the other similarly contrived efforts. And since forty states at present do not have such fundamental legal attacks on human life and the natural family as the basis of their fundamental law, the information presented is critical to understanding how the enactments came about so as to prevent the further inroads of such moral legal and depredations into America’s public life.

Since 1976, the Hyde Amendment banning federal tax funding has sought to “contain” federal tax funding of abortion. In that year, the original Hyde Amendment was offered with no exceptions, but it passed Congress with a life of the mother exception, to which were later added rape and incest funding exceptions.

Note that “containment” of an evil policy is ethical and has been successful in public affairs, as when the US policy of containment of the international expansion of Communism under the Soviet Union from 1947 to 1991 contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Planned Parenthood’s research arm has stated that an estimated 1,037,000 abortions occurred in 2023, the first complete calendar year after the US Supreme Court Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade, an “11% increase since 2020 [and] the highest number and rate measured in the United States in over a decade.”² Prolife advocates can yield no more public space to “Reproductive Freedom Constitutional Amendments” or statutes achieving the same policies.

Case Study: Virginia’s constitutional amendment for “reproductive freedom”

A brief focus on Virginia’s deceptive and misnamed “Reproductive Freedom Amendment” [S.J. Res. 1 (RFA)] can serve as a case study that may be helpful here. This amendment to Virginia’s Constitution will be submitted to voters in the November 3, 2026 general election. Some assume the RFA would simply return Virginia to what Vice President Harris said, that is, “… to put back the protections that are in Roe v. Wade into law” [Face the Nation, 9/10/2023], but that is incorrect.

Under the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade (1/22/1973) states could not make abortion illegal until the Supreme Court’s Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (6/24/2022) decision reversed Roe, returning legislative authority over abortion laws to the states. However, under Roe v. Wade, as later clarified by Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), laws related to the following goals were constitutional within the state’s interest in preserving both maternal health and individual fetal life:

• Require that the procedure be performed by a licensed physician;
• Enforce general medical licensing standards;
• Regulate abortion procedures to protect the health of the pregnant woman;
• Impose hospital or clinic standards (that were health of the mother related);
• Require reporting and record-keeping;
• Ban abortion after viability;
• Enact criminal penalties for post-viability abortions;
• Waiting periods (e.g., 24 hours);
• Informed consent requirements including scripts;
• Parental consent or notification (with judicial bypass);
• Mandatory counseling, even if ideologically framed;
• Restrictions on public funding;
• Ultrasound requirements (depending on implementation).

Yet none of the state abortion regulatory laws previously allowed under Roe and Planned Parenthood would be legal or constitutional under S. J. Res. 1 (RFA).

Two Republican state senators offered an amendment to S. J. Res 1 relating to the provision of medical care to a child who survives an abortion, requiring parental consent for abortion, regulating abortion for health purposes, or conditioning the provision of transgender drugs or surgery. But these proposed amendments failed. Thus:

1. Any Virginia law requiring that a child born alive after abortion should receive life-saving medical care would be unconstitutional;
2. Parental consent for a minor’s abortion would be unconstitutional;
3. Health and safety regulations for abortion clinics would be unconstitutional;
4. Restricting transgender drugs and surgeries for minors no matter how young, would be unconstitutional.

The Democrats’ S. J. Res. 1 contains no direct words or words that otherwise authorize regulating or prohibiting abortion in the first and second trimesters of pregnancy—nothing at all! SJ Res. 1 does not limit the performance of legal abortion only to physicians or licensed Virginia physicians. (Non-doctor abortions were authorized in 2020 (SB 733), making nurse practitioners eligible, along with doctors, to perform first trimester abortions.) The Democrats’ RFA provides that the Commonwealth may regulate the provision of abortion care only in the third trimester, which means that one doctor only needs to certify that the woman meets elastic conditions before a third trimester abortion may be performed with no further physician involvement.

Unlike the proposed S. J. Res. 1 (RFA), present Virginia law requires that a second trimester abortion must be performed in a licensed hospital (§ 18.2-73). Current Virginia law also requires for a third trimester abortion that three physicians have to certify that “the continuation of the pregnancy is likely to result in the death of the woman” or impair her physical or mental health (§ 18.2-74). And unlike the proposed S. J. Res. 1 (RFA), present Virginia law requires that “Measures for life support for the product of such abortion…must be available and utilized if there is any clearly visible evidence of viability” (§ 18.2-74). But Democrat legislators rejected an amendment to the RFA SJ Res. 1 to require that medical care be administered to a child who survives an abortion, making it legal to let a child who survives abortion die with no care required. Morally, this is infanticide by intentional neglect.

In the RFA (SJRes. 1) there is no exemption for doctors, or hospitals, clinics, etc., which operate under religious, personal, ethical or conscience objections to participating in abortions. But Virginia’s present law (§ 18.2-75) states, “Nothing in §§ 18.2-72, 18.2-73 or 18.2-74 shall require a hospital or other medical facility or physician to admit any patient under the provisions hereof for the purpose of performing an abortion.” This provision of Virginia law will become illegal and unconstitutional if voters approve the RFA.

The text of the proposed constitutional amendment for Virginia follows the footnotes.

¹The Status of Abortion-related State Ballot Initiatives Since Dobbs | KFF
²Despite Bans, Number of Abortions in the United States Increased in 2023 | Guttmacher Institute

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Proposed Constitutional Amendment
Fundamental Right to Reproductive Freedom, S.J.Res. 1—H.J. Res. 1

ARTICLE I BILL OF RIGHTS Section 11-A. Fundamental right to reproductive freedom.

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 care, miscarriage management, and fertility care.

An individual’s right to reproductive freedom shall not be, directly or indirectly, denied, burdened, or infringed upon unless justified by a compelling state interest achieved by the least restrictive means.

Notwithstanding the above, the Commonwealth may regulate the provision of abortion care in the third trimester, provided that in no circumstance shall the Commonwealth prohibit an abortion (i) that in the professional judgment of a physician is medically indicated to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual or (ii) when in the professional judgment of a physician the fetus is not viable

The Commonwealth shall not discriminate in the protection or enforcement of this fundamental right.

The Commonwealth shall not penalize, prosecute, or otherwise take adverse action against an individual based on such individual’s own exercise of this fundamental right or such individual’s own actual, potential, perceived, or alleged pregnancy outcomes, including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion. The Commonwealth shall not penalize, prosecute, or otherwise take adverse action against any individual for aiding or assisting another individual in exercising such other individual’s right to reproductive freedom with such other individual’s voluntary consent.

For the purposes of this section, a state interest is compelling only if it is for the limited purpose of maintaining or improving the health of an individual seeking care, consistent with accepted clinical standards of care and evidence-based medicine, and does not infringe on that individual’s autonomous decision making.

This section shall be self-executing. Any provision of this section held invalid shall be severable from the remaining portions of the section.