What to watch on reproductive rights in Virginia’s 2025 legislative session

“More people are paying attention this year now that we’re going to be in Trump 2.0 during this legislative session.”

For the upcoming General Assembly session in Virginia, there will be a lot of focus on advancing an abortion-care state constitutional amendment, but legislators are also working on bills to bolster women’s reproductive rights in other ways. 

Sen. Barbara Favola of Arlington told The Dogwood she plans to back legislation that would make sure tech companies behind period-tracking apps do not release their users’ data without consent. The extra legal protection would build on Favola’s work to prevent law enforcement from accessing menstrual health data stored on period-tracking apps. 

While some have decried such data protections as unneeded, Favola said a proactive approach is necessary given the uncertainty over women’s health care rights after the constitutional right to an abortion was taken away in 2022 and as states make abortion-care harder to access.

“Every time I turn around, I’m reading something about a state acting in a very extreme way, very harmful way, and very intrusive way when it comes to a woman’s privacy,” Favola said. “I’m taking as many steps as I can.” 

Protecting doctors

Favola will also again introduce a bill aimed at adding legal protections for doctors and health professionals who provide abortion-care services. The bills would create so-called shield laws that would block other states from punishing Virginia doctors for offering healthcare services that are legal in Virginia. 

Washington, D.C. and 18 states, including Maryland and Delaware, already have such laws on the books, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. These laws play an important role in providing abortion care access to patients in states with total and six-week abortion bans, according to a report published this year by the Society for Family Planning. 

Similar legislation passed out of the Virginia House of Delegates and Senate earlier this year, but Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed the bill, saying in part that the “bill is aimed at medical professionals from other states who may be in Virginia and subject to an extradition.” 

But Favola called Youngkin’s reasoning “crazy” because the goal of her bill is to protect doctors licensed in Virginia who are practicing in Virginia. She said Youngkin’s veto was consistent with a record that includes a failed push for a 15-week abortion ban. 

Birth control 

Other legislation that will be re-introduced is the Right to Contraception Act sponsored by Del. Marcia “Cia” Price of Newport News and Sen. Ghazala Hashmi of Chesterfield. Their legislation would protect people’s right to use and doctors’ right to prescribe birth control medication and measures. 

The legislation was vetoed earlier this year by Youngkin who claimed it did not include protections for health care providers who object to birth control on religious grounds and undermines parental rights. Supporters said the legislation would not require anybody to prescribe contraception if they have religious objections.

One of the challenges with getting support for the legislation was the misinformation used against it, Del. Price said in an interview with The Dogwood. Also, most people seem not to understand that birth control is often used by many women as a health care measure unrelated to preventing unwanted pregnancies, Price said. 

“People want to focus on people’s sexual habits – that has absolutely nothing to do with why contraception is needed for those of us that take it for healthcare,” Price said.

Two of the biggest lies Price has had to combat when defending the Right to Contraception Act was the falsehood that contraception causes abortion and the idea that access to birth control isn’t really at risk. 

Medically speaking, abortions end pregnancies, whereas birth control pills and IUDs prevent pregnancies from happening. And a US Supreme Court justice has called for the overturning of a landmark ruling that legalized birth control. Trump heading back to the White House adds additional urgency to protecting women’s health care rights given his administration helped bring about the end of the federal right to an abortion and his inconsistency on the issue. 

“More people are paying attention this year now that we’re going to be in Trump 2.0 during this legislative session,” Price said. 

Republican support for abortion restrictions is part of the reason a coalition of Virginia advocates are pushing for a state constitutional amendment to protect the right to an abortion, a multi-year process that does not involve the governor.

“We’re going to work darn hard at putting in protections, but Youngkin won’t sign any of them,” Favola said of the upcoming General Assembly session that begins Jan. 8. “At best, we’ll be able to defeat bills that will try to erode our current protections, and we’ll try to move forward with the constitutional amendment.”