Del. Via Price, D-Nwport News, speaks outside of Virginia’s Capitol on Feb. 7, 2025 to discuss her right-to-contraception bill amid a giant inflatable intrauterine device. (Photo by Charlotte Rene Woods / Virginia Mercury)
Contraception access is an issue resonating loudly within Virginia’s public and political spheres this year and last week, it manifested through state lawmakers contrasting Virginia’s twice-failed attempt to protect access to birth control medications against a similar measure that recently sailed through neighboring Tennessee’s legislature.
For the second year in a row, Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed a right-to-contraception bill carried by Del. Cia Price, D-Newport News, who took to social media over the weekend to highlight how, unlike in the commonwealth, Tennessee lawmakers were able to come together and pass a bipartisan bill on the issue.
“When I mentioned Tennessee was able to get something done, it wasn’t to say Virginia should become Tennessee,” Price said in a call with The Mercury Monday. “It was the fact that even Tennessee Republicans were willing to act on contraception.”
Del. Michael Webert, R-Faquier, who is among leadership in the House Republican Caucus and who voted against Price’s bill, replied directly to Price online, posting that he’d be “happy to work on a detailed version of the Tennessee bill if you’re game.”
This was after Garren Shipley, a communications director in the GOP House Caucus, suggested that had Price’s bill mirrored Tennessee’s, she’d have found “90 or more” people willing to vote for it.
“A lot of us had real concerns with the bill Delegate Price brought forward. It seemed much more concerned with setting up lawsuits than actually protecting contraception in law,” Webert said Monday, in a statement relayed through Shipley.
Webert was unavailable for a phone call Monday as he was busy with work on his farm. He texted The Mercury a picture of his cattle that were being rounded up for their annual vaccines.
“I haven’t done a head count, but I’m confident that our Republican caucus would bring at least 40 or more votes to the table for a bill like the one from Tennessee,” Webert’s statement said.
But Price emphasized that her bill would have legally protected people’s access to contraception if their rights were to be infringed.
“People need to know that their leaders are going to stand up to protect their rights,” she said.
Tennessee’s bill says that the state “unambiguously acknowledges the right of a healthcare provider, instead of an individual, to perform, and the right of a person to receive or use, fertility treatment and contraceptives in this state.”
The bill goes on to clarify that the bill “does not create an entitlement” to the treatments, or to coverage or funding of them.
Prices’ bill, on the other hand, would create an avenue for individuals to sue if their access were denied.
“The Virginia statute is broader and stronger than the Tennessee statute (when it comes to contraception),” said Meredith Harbach, a law professor at the University of Richmond.
While the Tennessee contraception bill also includes in vitro fertilization (a topic Virginia lawmakers in both parties have carried legislation on), Harbach emphasized that both Virginia’s and Tennessee’s bills were ways to offer state-level support for reproductive health care options.
She said the Tennessee bill is “not especially controversial” because it supports a person having a right to engage in fertility and contraception treatments, but stops short of legal cause of action. Meanwhile, Virginia’s bill establishes a state-level right for contraceptives and creates a cause of action to sue if that is infringed upon.
For Price, her bill was also personal, as contraception helps her treat her polycystic ovarian syndrome symptoms. Beyond preventing unplanned pregnancies, contraception is used to treat conditions like Price’s as well as endometriosis.
Harbach found it “interesting” to see Virginia Democrats employing a legal pathway that Texas Republicans had used in a state law allowing individuals a cause of action to sue people who perform abortions or assist in accessing them after six weeks of pregnancy.
Just as the Texas law had been controversial among Democrats and reproductive rights advocates for its legal pathway, the lawsuit component in Price and Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Richmond’s bills have proven controversial among Virginia’s Republican Caucus.
Campaign talking points
The surge of discussion from Republicans on contraception access comes as GOP gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears remains largely silent about it and in a year where the state’s entire House of Delegates is up for election.
Earle-Sears technically weighed in on contraception earlier this year after Democratic maneuvering forced her to vote in the Senate on that chamber’s version of Price’s bill. The Democratic Party of Virginia has pointed out Earle-Sears’ opposing vote in press releases for months. Her Democratic opponent, former congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, has said she will sign the bill into law if it comes to her as future governor.
Meanwhile, Virginia Democrats have stressed urgency on the matter as other states have pursued restrictions on contraception and congressional efforts to establish stronger safeguards have stalled. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested contraception access laws should be revisited after the court ruled to overturn federal abortion protections in 2022.
Though state Republicans have largely dissented on contraception access and progressive reproductive health care measures, some GOP lawmakers have recently broken from the pack.
Webert recalled that Del. Kim Taylor, R-Petersburg, carried a bill to allow an income tax deduction for people seeking IVF treatment to start or continue their families. The bill did not advance this legislative session.
Taylor also sponsored a bill to affirm protections specifically for non-viable pregnancies. With no national definition, doctors handle non-viable pregnancies on a case-by-case basis.
Defined in Taylor’s bill, a “nonviable pregnancy” is one that “cannot result in a live-born infant, including an ectopic pregnancy or failed intrauterine pregnancy.”
That bill also did not advance.
Taylor, who held her seat against her Democratic challenger Kimberly Pope Adams last time by 53 votes, faces her again this year. The seat is among several that are crucial to determine partisan control of the House.
With Democrats dominating both the House and Senate, some policies have been able to advance to the governor for his acceptance or veto purely on partisan lines this year.
Price’s right-to-contraception bill advanced on a bipartisan basis before facing Youngkin’s rejection.
Virginia may not need a bill like Price’s or Tennessee’s, if an effort to enshrine broader reproductive rights into the state’s constitution succeeds.
Having passed the legislature once already, a constitutional amendment to protect reproductive health care ranging from abortions to contraception and in vitro fertilization must pass again next year before appearing as a ballot referendum for voters around the state to consider and vote on. That measure, however has advanced only because of a Democratic majority in both chambers, setting up as a potential key motivator as voters head to the polls this year.
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