Question 1 asks whether the constitution should protect the freedom to make personal decisions about prenatal care, childbirth, birth control, abortion, miscarriage management and fertility care. It would also shield doctors, nurses and patients from being punished for those decisions. The language would allow restrictions on abortion in the third trimester, but not where the patient's health is at risk or the pregnancy cannot survive.
Question 2 asks whether the constitution should drop its ban on same-sex marriage, affirm that two adults may marry regardless of sex, gender or race, and require that all legally valid marriages be treated equally under the law. That would strike the 2006 provision defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Both measures cleared the General Assembly on party-line votes, carried by Democratic majorities. Because they alter the constitution, they go to the people rather than to the governor's desk. Church leaders in the state are not waiting for November. In recent weeks, pastors and clergy have urged congregations to vote no on both questions. At one parish in Sterling, a speaker addressed worshipers after every Mass on the two measures and urged a no vote.
The stakes are plain. A constitutional amendment is not an ordinary law. Once written into a state's founding document, it stands above the legislature and can be undone only by another long vote of the people. Supporters of Question 1 call it a protection of freedom. Opponents note that its wording reaches abortion, and that its exceptions leave the decision about "health" in hands the text does not define.
What a constitution says about a child
Strip away the ballot language and the question under Question 1 is old and simple: who is the child in the womb? Is that child a person, or a decision?
The Bible does not leave us guessing. David wrote of his own beginning in words that have comforted mothers for three thousand years:
"For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb." (Psalm 139:13)
Notice the verbs. God possessed. God covered. He was at work before any doctor, any statute, any court. And He spoke to the prophet in the same spirit: "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee" (Jeremiah 1:5). A life known by God before it is seen by man cannot be made less than a life by a vote, however many pages the amendment runs.
Christians should be careful here. The woman facing a hard pregnancy is not an enemy. She is frightened, often alone, and she needs a neighbor, a church that will carry groceries and diapers and stand in the hospital hall. The gospel does not shout at her. It offers her mercy and offers her child a name. But mercy for the mother never requires the taking of the child, and a constitution that places that taking beyond the reach of the people's lawmakers has moved in the wrong direction.
And what of marriage?
Question 2 touches something just as deep. Marriage was not invented by a legislature, and it cannot be redefined by one. Our Lord Himself pointed back to the beginning, to the Creator who made them male and female, and joined the two as one flesh. Christians hold that teaching with love for every neighbor and without apology. Those who disagree with us are not to be hated. They are to be spoken to with grace and, where they will hear it, with the good news of a Savior who forgives sinners of every kind, the writer of this article included.
But grace is not silence. A citizen who loves his neighbor may still say honestly that a proposed change is wrong, and may cast a vote that says so.
My friend, if you live in Virginia, you have a ballot and a conscience, and you will answer to God for how you use both. Read the exact wording of each question. Talk with your family. Then go and vote on Nov. 3 as one who believes that every child is knit together by a hand that does not make mistakes, and that the Word of the Lord stands when the polls have closed and the ballots are counted.