Richmond, Virginia—The Virginia Mercury has reported that Winsome Earle-Sears has once again used her platform to indicate her disapproval of a constitutional amendment. Yesterday, in her role as president of the Virginia Senate, she signed off on the in-progress constitutional amendment to protect reproductive freedom. But, in an unusual move, she chose to add a handwritten note saying that she is personally opposed to the amendment, which allows Virginians to plan the size of their family through access to abortion and contraception. The amendment also protects the right of community members struggling with infertility to expand their family through in vitro fertilization. 

This is the second time Earle-Sears has expressed her personal objection to different types of families: as the Virginia Scope first reported, she also expressed her objection to a constitutional amendment removing Virginia’s regressive anti-gay marriage language from our constitution and adding language to affirmatively protect LGBTQ+ families and interracial marriages. This, plus Earle-Sears’s opposition to the first openly gay Attorney General candidate, led a founder of the Virginia Log Cabin Republicans to describe her as “not a conservative…kind of a theocratic totalitarian.”  Despite Earle-Sears’s written objections to autonomy and protection for Virginia families, her words do not currently carry the force of law: Virginia’s constitutional amendment process is legislatively referred and not subject to gubernatorial veto.  

“Winsome Earle-Sears is dangerous for anyone whose family falls outside her narrow understanding of what a family is, and by writing out her opposition to the constitutional amendments, she’s making sure that everyone knows it,” said LaTwyla Mathias, Executive Director at Progress Virginia. “Her views are not just antiquated and harmful, they make it clear exactly what the stakes are in this next election. We are not going back to a time when gay people and interracial couples had to exist in the shadows. We’re not going to let Winsome Earle-Sears decide what kind of medical care you can get, what size your family should be, or whether you should be allowed to expand your family through IVF. These are family decisions that should be made by families, not politicians, and every kind of family must be treated with respect. Winsome Earle-Sears has made it clear this week that if she’s elected governor, she won’t be bringing respect: she’ll be bringing bans, cuts, and a long record of opposition to your basic freedoms.”