VIRGINIA – New reporting from Virginia Scope highlights Winsome Earle-Sears’ extreme record on abortion and contraception including her support of the extreme Texas law that bans abortion after six weeks and her recent tie-breaking vote against the Right to Contraception Act. Continuing her ongoing pattern of dodging the media, Sears declined to provide a comment for the story. 

Virginia Scope: Abortion access divides Sears and Spanberger in Virginia’s race for governor

• In the first Virginia governor’s race since the fall of Roe v. Wade, abortion access has emerged as one of the starkest dividing lines between Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears and former Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger.

• Sears, a vocal opponent of abortion, has aligned herself with proposals to restrict access, signaling support for a 15-week ban.

• Sears declined to provide a comment for this story. 

• Sears has long aligned herself with the conservative wing of the Republican Party on abortion, backing proposals to impose new limits on the procedure in Virginia. 

• During her 2021 lieutenant governor campaign, she drew criticism for expressing support for Texas-style six-week bans, a stance that energized anti-abortion advocates and alarmed abortion rights supporters.

• Her record signals a willingness to go further if Republicans gain control of state government.

• She expressed support for a Texas law that bans abortion after six weeks… “Well, I can tell you that would be me, that I would support it,” she said during the 2021 interview with Newsmax.

• She refrained from retracting her earlier support for a Texas-style heartbeat ban.

• Sears delivered the keynote address at the March for Life in Richmond earlier this month.

• Democrats in the state Senate forced Sears to cast a tie-breaking vote against a bill involving a woman’s right to contraception. The bill would have guaranteed a right to obtain and use birth control in Virginia. [...] Sears was then forced to do one of her two constitutionally mandated duties: cast a tie-breaking vote. She voted against it and killed the bill.

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