At Sebastian’s Point: How Did We Get Here, America? How Could Virginia Change It?

Life has become so trivial in America that even our politicians can openly discuss killing an opponent or political colleague with no shock nor unanimous call for that candidate or office holder to admit their gross attitude and step aside.  Never has this been the norm in our society, but it has become so in Virginia during this off-year election cycle.

“How has this happened?” many of us ask. Why has the Democratic candidate for Virginia Attorney General, Jay Jones, been given a pass by his running mates after it was brought to light that he had texted a colleague about his fantasies involving shooting the Republican House Speaker, as well as his young children?  Is his limp semi-apology enough to make him eligible to be the state law enforcement officer? These are questions only the voters of Virginia can answer this month.

They are valid questions, but they don’t help us understand what has happened in America that could create such thoughts?  The answer is Roe v. Wade and unlimited abortion since 1973.  Multiple generations have come of age in a culture that allows the killing of some individuals because their lives are considered complications for other people. Mothers are told that their unborn babies are mistakes, fathers are told that they don’t need to step up and defend the lives of their unborn children, friends and family support the sideways notion that unexpected pregnancies are just a problem to be eliminated.

Tragically, too many doctors, healthcare workers, and social workers have also been corrupted by a system that ignores the reality of the lives that are destroyed by the abortions they perform. It is the same corrupt system that denies that child’s mother the support and services she really needs. Abortion became the quickest answer. Addressing the flaws in our culture that make so many pregnancies a “problem” is hard work. Not to mention, there is a profit motive at work; abortion is big business.

Virginia’s current election cycle is a major test for all of America. The state is always a sort of bellwether after the presidential election years, but never more so than this year. On the agenda, the next major fight is to pass an amendment that will enshrine unlimited abortion through all nine months of pregnancy into the state constitution. The best and probably only chance Virginians have to stop this nightmare is this year’s elections, especially for control of the House of Delegates, which will decide the fate of the amendment.

The legacy of Roe is clearly evident in the elections. All three Democrats running at the top of the ticket for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general are avowedly pro-abortion. Each of them has made passage of the unlimited abortion amendment a primary goal of their platforms. The candidate for Lt. Governor, Ghazala Hashmi, has even carried the bill and previously voted for it in the Virginia Senate.  They have each announced their support for assisted suicide and their willingness to overturn Virginia’s current ban on the practice.

Sadly, no pro-life Democrats are running for any state offices in Virginia this year. Even in the House races, the divide is clear. The initial vote on the amendment in the 2025 General Assembly session was along strict party lines. The margin was close as the pro-abortion majority is only two votes. That is why it is critical to hold every incumbent pro-lifer and hopefully flip two seats. Even one flip will cause a tie, which will prevent passage, as there is no method to break a tie in the House of Delegates.

This brings us back to the question of how we got to this point where politicians have so little respect for human life that they openly suggest that they might happily shoot a fellow politician who holds different views from themselves.

Those politicians who support unlimited abortion in Virginia seem to be struggling with their embarrassment that one of their own has spoken so casually about killing another person and his children, but they can’t bring themselves to denounce him because it might mean that a pro-life candidate would win that race. Perhaps it’s because he only said the quiet part out loud—that some of them wouldn’t be upset about if it really happened? Are they that far gone? After all, they have already decided that some lives have more value than others and that it is perfectly ok to end their lives before birth or if they have become too fragile to speak for themselves.  Protecting the most vulnerable human lives under the law is not on their agenda, but expanding abortion and suicide in Virginia is.  Rational thought seems to be off the table when abortion promotion is on it.

How Virginians vote this year will send a message to all of America. Look at the diverse and strong pro-life team at the top of the ticket.  A pro-life African-American woman, Winsome Sears, dared to say that abortion is wicked and a direct attack on the Black community, which is true, so she must be stopped.  An openly gay, pro-life man, John Reid has stood by parents in Northern Virginia repeatedly this fall, calling for parents’ right to protect minor girls from secret school-supported abortions and to protect the privacy of girls and boys in school locker rooms, bathrooms, and sports. A Cuban-American pro-life man, Jason Miyares, has defended pregnancy care centers attacked after the Dobbs decision. He also fights the human trafficking rings that bring young victims in Virginia to obtain secret abortions at the growing number of facilities along the interstates in the Commonwealth.

Since the Dobbs decision, abortion has dramatically expanded in Virginia. Six new facilities have opened around the state, and the number of women traveling into the state to get abortions continues to multiply. The passage of the so-called “Fundamental Right to Reproductive Freedom” will condemn Virginia to becoming the abortion center of the southeastern United States and prevent any opportunity in the future to defend the lives of unborn children or their mothers from an abortion industry determined to use Virginia as its stronghold. 

Watching the pro-abortion Democratic candidates dance around the fact that one of their own –and the man they have selected to run for Attorney General—has made reprehensible and vile public comments is proof that the most important issue for them all this year is unlimited abortion. The legacy of Roe v. Wade is still entrenched in the Democratic Party in Virginia, as the evidence shows this year.

The only way forward is to reject the Party of Death and move the needle towards a new day in Virginia and America, one that rejects violence against all innocent life.