By Hala Ayala, Prince William Times
I’m ready to tell a story I once only shared with two people.
This story is about my experiences, but it belongs to the women of Virginia. It belongs to those whose survival and wellbeing depend on reproductive freedom. It belongs to people like me who have needed or will need birth control, miscarriage management, prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care and abortion care.
This November, we can amend our state constitution to protect reproductive freedom in Virginia.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the responsibility to protect or ban reproductive healthcare shifted to the states. One by one, extreme laws and bans swept through state legislatures. In Virginia, we fight each year to defeat laws that aim to strip bodily autonomy away from you, your family, and your friends.
We now hold the tenuous status as the final state in the South without a post‑Roe abortion ban. This November, we can cement that status.
For many of us, this need to protect reproductive freedom is not theoretical. It is intimate, urgent, and deeply personal.
When I was 20, I had a miscarriage. I didn’t understand what was happening to me, only that I was bleeding so heavily I had to sit on a newspaper for the ride to the hospital.
The doctors told me I needed a D&C, an abortion procedure that is standard care after a miscarriage to prevent infection and severe bleeding. It was medical care. It was necessary. And it saved me.
In 2023, Porsha Ngumezi did not receive that care. She was bleeding like I was, too much and too fast. She needed miscarriage management, but post-Roe laws meant her doctors could not treat her with a D&C without the threat of up to 99 years in prison. She died. Her sons were 5 and 3 years old. They should still have their mother.
At 24, I gave birth to my son. It was a very traumatic birth. I went into shock and nearly died. My son nearly died, too.
Women of color like me are more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth by staggering margins. For families that live in states with abortion bans, maternal mortality has climbed even higher. I survived because a nurse acted immediately. In places where medical professionals are forced to second‑guess every move through a fog of legal risk, hesitation steals precious minutes—and sometimes lives.
There is a maternal health crisis in this country and in Virginia. We need protections for birth control, miscarriage management, prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, fertility care, and abortion care. These are not talking points; they are the messy, human realities of medicine and family life. You don’t experience pregnancy on a political debate stage. You experience it in exam rooms and emergency rooms, in joy and fear, in love and uncertainty.
When I was 25, I became pregnant again despite using birth control. I was terrified that this time I wouldn’t just come close to dying in childbirth, I would die. I also could not stop thinking about what a complicated pregnancy and risky birth could mean for my infant son. I needed to be there for him while he was in and out of the hospital that year and through every milestone to come. I couldn’t go through that trauma again and I would not leave my son without a mother, so I chose to have an abortion.
I am grateful I could receive abortion care and that my doctor could provide it. The clinic I went to provided me with resources and education. The doctor centered my judgment, safety, and values. I made the decision that was right for my health and family. Everyone should have the ability to choose the care that is best for them.
That’s what this constitutional amendment is about: ensuring that families and their doctors, not politicians, can make time‑sensitive, often life‑saving, decisions. It’s about protecting the judgment of trained medical professionals and the privacy of patients whose lives will never fit neatly into a slogan.
Virginia has a chance to lead with clarity and care. We can protect our neighbors who miscarry, our friends who aren’t ready to start a family, our colleagues navigating fertility, our loved ones carrying complicated pregnancies, and so many others. We can give clinicians what they need most in a crisis: the freedom to act in the best interest of their patients.
This November, Virginians will show up to vote to fight for autonomy, protect life‑saving healthcare, and prevent unspeakable family tragedy across the Commonwealth. We will vote to say that our lives, health and dignity are not bargaining chips.
It’s time to place compassion and medical judgment where fear and politics cannot reach them.
Put dignity and medical judgment in Virginia’s Constitution.
Hala Ayala made history as the first Afro-Latina woman in Virginia to be elected to the House of Delegates and served the 51st District from 2018 to 2022. In 2021, she ran for lieutenant governor of Virginia. She currently serves as the National PAC director for the National Organization for Women (NOW) advocating for equity and representation for women.