The crowd cheers for Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger at her election night watch party in Richmond on Nov. 4, 2025. She won her race for governor, along with New Jersey’s Mikie Sherrill, and both voiced support for reproductive rights protections on the campaign trail. (Photo by Charlotte Renee Woods/Virginia Mercury)
Despite less focus on abortion in the 2025 election, voters Tuesday supported Democratic candidates who back reproductive rights in New Jersey and Virginia, and retained Democratic justices in Pennsylvania who will take up abortion-related cases.
The Virginia electorate made history Tuesday by voting for former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat set to be the first woman governor of the commonwealth. Winning 57% of the vote, she defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears — the first Black woman in the nation to lead a GOP gubernatorial ticket.
“It’s a big deal that the girls and the young women I have met along the campaign trail now know with certainty that they can achieve anything,” Spanberger said during her victory speech.
While campaigning, she pledged to support Virginia’s reproductive rights protections. Virginia law allows abortion in the first and second trimesters. Earle-Sears said she would sign a ban on abortion at 15 weeks or earlier into law if elected and that she was “morally opposed” to a potential abortion-rights amendment.
Democrats swept elections across the state, winning all races for the executive branch and gaining more than a dozen seats in the House of Delegates, Virginia Mercury reported.
An increase of the General Assembly’s Democratic majority all but solidifies that Virginia voters could put a reproductive freedom amendment into the state constitution next year. The legislature already approved a resolution in February that would secure the right to abortion, fertility treatments, contraception and similar reproductive health care. But state law requires such proposals to be reviewed twice in consecutive legislative sessions before going to voters.
If the measure makes the November 2026 ballot and voters approve the amendment, Virginia would be the first state in the Southeast to shore up reproductive rights since the U.S. Supreme Court upended abortion rights nationally in June 2022. Virginia is the only state in the region that did not restrict access after the landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.
Spanberger’s former congressional roommate made history in New Jersey this week, too.
U.S. Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill won her race for governor against Republican Jack Ciattarelli, clinching at least 56% of the vote, New Jersey Monitor reported.
Sherrill will be the first Democratic woman governor of the Garden State, and her victory marks the first time in more than 60 years since either party has won that office three elections in a row.
“Governors have never mattered more,” she said Tuesday night. “In this state, I am determined to build prosperity for all of our citizens.”
The race revolved around cost-of-living concerns, and polling showed abortion was not a top issue for voters. But reproductive rights advocates backed Sherrill, who supports New Jersey’s abortion protections. Outgoing Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation in 2023 that secured the right, and it’s one of a handful of states with no gestational limits on abortion.
Advocates in New Jersey feared a Ciattarelli win could rollback access. He signaled that he would sign a 20-week abortion ban and a law requiring parental notification for minors seeking abortions, and he pledged to divert state funding from Planned Parenthood to anti-abortion centers, the Monitor reported.
In Pennsylvania, abortion-rights advocates and opponents poured millions into ads and mailers for the state’s judicial retention elections, stressing the importance of state supreme courts in legal battles over abortion laws post-Roe.
Voters retained Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty and David Wecht this week, maintaining the court’s 5-2 Democratic majority, Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported.
A case about the constitutionality of a ban on using state Medicaid funds to cover any abortion is expected to end up before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court again. A majority of the justices allowed the lawsuit to move forward last year and sent the challenge back to the lower courts.
Donohue said she suspected that the ban likely violates Pennsylvania’s Equal Rights Amendment. “The right to make healthcare decisions related to reproduction is a core important right encompassed by the enmeshed privacy interest protected by our Charter,” she wrote in a lead opinion that Dougherty partially agreed with and Wecht joined.
And while affordability was the key issue in the New York City mayoral race where Zohran Mamdani emerged victorious, several reproductive rights groups endorsed the Democratic Socialist assemblymember.
Last year, he supported adding an Equal Rights Amendment to the state constitution that bars discrimination, including for reproductive health care choices and pregnancy outcomes.
“Access to sexual and reproductive healthcare should be guaranteed for New Yorkers — not dependent on who is in office,” Mamdani wrote in an October 2024 opinion article for Queens Daily Eagle. More than 60% of voters approved the amendment the following month.
On the mayoral campaign trail, Mamdani also promised to bring universal child care to the most populated city in the U.S. He and Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul agree that lawmakers should address the child care crisis. But Mamdani will need approval from Hochul and the legislature to fund his initiative, New York Focus reported.
“In the face of devastating federal budget proposals, attacks on Medicaid, and coordinated efforts to gut access to abortion and gender-affirming care, strong local and state leadership have never been more critical,” said Wendy Stark, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York Votes PAC, this summer. “We know that as mayor, Zohran will fight to ensure that sexual and reproductive health care providers have the resources and support they need to care for their communities.”
This story was originally produced by News From The States, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Alabama Reflector, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
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Author: Elisha Brown