Virginia’s Amendment 1 Threatens Parental Rights

I remember a call our organization received some fifteen years ago from a mother in Oregon. She described herself as a pro-choice activist who had voted Democrat her whole life. Yet she was outraged to learn that her local public school had sent her daughter off campus to a clinic for an abortion without her knowledge or consent. She understood that when someone was arranging a life-altering medical procedure for her child, she had both a right and a responsibility to be involved.



Her concern points to a principle that reaches beyond political affiliation. Parents are not outsiders in their children’s lives. Their responsibility to protect, guide, and care for their children does not depend on permission from a school, a medical provider, or the government.

That principle rests on a deeper foundation. The right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children is pre-political. Parental rights precede government; they are not privileges government creates. They arise from the parent-child relationship and the corresponding duty to nurture and protect the child. Government’s proper role is to recognize and secure these rights, not to treat them as dispensable obstacles to its preferred policies.

The Declaration of Independence expresses this understanding. Human beings are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, and governments are instituted to secure those rights. Virginia’s own Constitution likewise begins by recognizing inherent rights, including the enjoyment of life and liberty. This understanding places limits on political power: unalienable fundamental rights do not become expendable simply because a majority approves different constitutional language. 

It is with these principles in mind that Virginia families should examine Amendment 1, the proposed constitutional amendment concerning reproductive freedom on the November 3, 2026, ballot. The ballot question describes protections for personal decisions and medical care. But voters must examine the full amendment, because that text—not the ballot’s summary— becomes part of Virginia’s Constitution. elections.virginia.gov

The amendment extends a fundamental right to reproductive freedom to “every individual,” covering decisions about prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, abortion, miscarriage management, and fertility care. It contains no express age limitation and no express protection for parental notification, consent, or participation. elections.virginia.gov

That omission matters. A minor is an individual, but deeming by decree rights for a child into law does not answer the separate question of who bears responsibility for guiding and protecting that child. The amendment recasts parental involvement as an infringement of a minor child's autonomy rather than recognizing it as the exercise of an independent, fundamental right and responsibility.

Its prohibition against discrimination in protecting or enforcing reproductive freedom adds another concern. Challengers could argue that requiring parental involvement for minors imposes a discriminatory restriction unavailable against adults. Its breadth intentionally creates a serious avenue for challenging parental safeguards. 

The problem becomes more pronounced when we examine the amendment’s treatment of a compelling state interest. It generally permits restrictions only when justified by such an interest and accomplished through the least restrictive means. But it then narrowly defines the interests that may qualify: maintaining or improving the health of the person seeking care, consistent with specified medical standards, without infringing that person’s autonomous decision-making. 

This is far more than the familiar language of strict scrutiny. It supplies a restricted definition that will make it virtually impossible to defend parental involvement on the independent grounds of protecting the parent-child relationship, respecting parents’ constitutional rights, or fulfilling their responsibility for their children’s upbringing. If parental consent is characterized as interfering with a minor’s autonomous decision-making, the amendment provides challengers with a virtually irrefutable argument against requiring it. 

The full text also protects individuals who aid or assist another person in exercising reproductive freedom with that person’s voluntary consent. Applied to minors, this provision could be invoked to defend any adult who helps a child obtain an abortion without involving her parents. The amendment expressly addresses the consent of the individual receiving assistance but does not expressly preserve parental consent requirements. 

These concerns do not require speculation about the motives of the amendment’s authors. They arise from the language voters are being asked to place in their Constitution.

Virginia law already recognizes a parent’s fundamental right to make decisions concerning a child’s upbringing, education, and care. Its abortion-consent statute also provides for parental or other authorized adult involvement, while including judicial procedures and exceptions addressing circumstances such as abuse and medical emergencies. The question is whether Amendment 1 nullifies these existing protections to successful constitutional challenges. 

The U.S. Supreme Court’s reasoning in Parham v. J.R. explains why parental involvement deserves protection. The Court recognized that parents ordinarily possess the maturity, experience, and judgment their children lack, and that the natural bonds of affection generally lead parents to act in their children’s best interests. Addressing children’s ability to make medical decisions, the Court stated: “Parents can and must make those judgments.” 442 U.S. 584, 602–03 (1979). 

Parental authority is not unlimited. Children must be protected from abuse and neglect, and Parham recognized the need for safeguards appropriate to the medical decision involved. But the possibility that some parents will fail their children does not justify treating fit parents generally as obstacles to be bypassed. The law should address genuine dangers without discarding the presumption that parents act for their children’s good. 

Nor can a state constitutional amendment erase rights protected by the United States Constitution. The Supremacy Clause binds state courts notwithstanding contrary provisions in state constitutions. And in Troxel v. Granville, the Supreme Court’s plurality described parents’ interest in the care, custody, and control of their children as among the oldest fundamental liberty interests the Court has recognized. 530 U.S. 57, 65–66 (2000). 

Those principles provide substantial grounds for resisting applications of Amendment 1 that violate parental rights. They do not, however, guarantee how every future dispute would be resolved. Families should not have to rely on years of litigation to establish whether they may participate in some of the most consequential decisions their children will ever face. A later judicial victory cannot restore a parent’s opportunity to counsel and protect a child before an irreversible decision.

Before voting on Amendment 1, read its full text and consider what its omissions could mean for your family. A constitutional amendment should secure fundamental rights—not create a means of bypassing the parents whose love, judgment, and protection their children may need most.