RICHMOND (LifeSiteNews) — Virginia Democrat Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed legislation on April 8 establishing a “right” to contraception, which had previously been vetoed by her Republican predecessor Glenn Youngkin.

HB 6 states that a “person shall have the right to obtain contraceptives and to engage in contraception. A health care provider shall have the right to provide contraceptives and contraception-related information to the extent the provider is properly licensed and acting within the scope of the provider’s professional practice.”

These rights “shall not be infringed upon by any law, regulation, or policy that expressly or effectively limits, delays, or impedes access to contraceptives or information related to contraception.” 

It covers “any drug, device, or biological product intended for use in the prevention of pregnancy, whether specifically intended to prevent pregnancy or for other health needs, that is legally marketed under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act,” including “oral contraceptives, long-acting reversible contraceptives such as intrauterine devices and hormonal contraceptive implants, emergency contraceptives, internal and external condoms, injectables, vaginal barrier methods, transdermal patches, and vaginal rings.”

Spanberger has not commented on the move, but Lt. Gov. Ghazala Hashmi issued a statement declaring, “as the last Southern state that has not imposed sweeping restrictions on critical medical care, Virginia has the responsibility to protect access to safe and legal reproductive health care.”

Local CBS affiliate WTKR notes that Youngkin had vetoed similar measures in 2024 and 2025, saying in 2024, “I support access to contraception. However, we cannot trample on the religious freedoms of Virginians. And that is the issue the recommendations I sent back to the General Assembly addressed,” he said.

Contraception, which separates separates sexuality from procreation and often comes with serious health harms for women, is routinely touted as an alternative to pregnancy, by preventing conception rather than destroying an already-conceived human being. But several forms of contraception do have an abortifacient capacity, which the abortion lobby has gone to great lengths to obscure. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a purportedly impartial medical authority that in reality is heavily pro-abortion, redefined “conception” in the 1960s to refer to implantation rather than fertilization, for the purpose of making contraception more culturally acceptable.

READ: Women using contraception exposed to double heart attack and stroke risk: major study

For example, in January 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) amended Plan B’s label to “clarify” that it was not an abortifacient. But such drugs do in fact have abortifacient potential, and whether they prevent conception or implantation depends on when they are taken relative to a woman’s cycle.

“If Plan B is taken five to two days before egg release is due to happen, the interference with the LH signal prevents a woman from releasing an egg, no fertilization happens, and no embryo is formed,” Dr. Donna Harrison of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists explains, citing numerous studies. However, if the pill is taken during the “two-day window in which embryos can form but positive pregnancy tests don’t occur,” studies indicate it “has a likely embryocidal effect in stopping pregnancy.”

This fall, Virginians will vote on a proposed amendment to establish in the Virginia Constitution a “right” to surgical abortions, abortion pills, contraception, and fertility “treatments,” such as embryo-destructive in vitro fertilization (IVF).

Abortion is currently legal in Virginia, but subject to a number of regulations such as facility standards, parental involvement and informed consent requirements, and limits on public funding. All such restrictions would be put at risk should the amendment become law. Last year, a study by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute reported that abortions in Virginia increased by 5,500 from 2023 to 2024, driven mostly by women traveling from pro-life states.