Myth of the Week: Does Wittman help families?
Your family has it a lot harder with Wittman in Washington.
Welcome to Myth of the Week, where we address some of the most-repeated myths about Rob Wittman’s work as our VA-01 Congressional representative.
MYTH:
Rob Wittman helps families.
REALITY:
Rob Wittman makes families poorer, less healthy, and less stable.
Families of all configurations have similar needs: childcare, public education, healthcare, housing, and social safety nets. Whatever our specific families look like, we all deserve support systems that enable us to thrive. We need plentiful, equitable, and accessible family-centric resources.
We live in a country that claims to value families and cherish children, yet many of our systems are structured to penalize families and deny them access to support and resources. For a rich country like America, this is shameful and inexcusable.
Congressman Rob Wittman claims he’s all about family values and that he wants families to have opportunities to grow. He says he believes in expanding maternal healthcare, improving childcare access, and advocating for in-vitro fertilization (IVF). An adoptee (as he repeatedly reminds us in his emails), Wittman has supported adoption-related legislation. He has opposed reproductive rights, supports forced birth, and has co-sponsored multiple iterations of “fetal personhood” laws. Wittman talks a lot about supporting families, but his actions tell a different story.
How much does Wittman really deliver for families?
Good intentions do not necessarily make good legislation
Wittman co-sponsored one promising bill to help military families, but his other family-related bills — whether they passed or not — are deeply flawed and fall perilously short. Here’s the lowdown:
Assuring Navigation of Compact Help For Ongoing Relocation (ANCHOR) for Military Families Act (H. R. 3566)
Introduced in the House in May 2025, and has not progressed
Would help ease the strain of relocation for military families
Wittman is one of 15 bipartisan co-sponsors
Sponsored by Wittman; introduced in the House January 2025, but has not progressed
Would force family planning services “to provide pamphlets containing contact information for adoption centers to anyone receiving family planning services”
Would pressure economically disadvantaged pregnant people into relinquishing their children
Prioritizes adoption over keeping families intact by giving them needed financial assistance to help them raise their children
Sanctity of Human Life Act (multiple versions)
Wittman co-sponsored NINE extreme personhood bills with this title between 2007-2021
These bills hold that from the moment of conception, a fetus has the same rights as any born person, including federal and state Constitutional rights
Catastrophic repercussions if passed:
Criminalization of pregnant people and their medical providers
Curtails our right to make our own reproductive health decisions
Creates chaos and ambiguity in the law: “The ambiguity of exclusions and exceptions combined with the exorbitant penalties for violating abortion bans chills lifesaving healthcare.”
Raises issues about when, whether and how the rights of the fetus “person” supercede those of the pregnant person
Fetal personhood measures have resulted in the criminalization of hundreds of women after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in June 2022.
We are thankful for one thing: Wittman’s ideas are so bad, or he is so epically unpopular and inept among his colleagues in Congress, that his bills haven’t progressed very far. But when we examine his ideas and their implications, we are horrified. These are the ways he thinks American families can be made better? Separating parents from their children and criminalizing reproductive healthcare? This isn’t valuing families; it’s political terrorism.
Wittman’s votes harm families
Whether Wittman co-sponsors family-related legislation or just votes for it, his track record leaves havoc in its wake.
He voted for H. R. 1 — the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” that’s anything but —resulting in devastating cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, resources relied upon by millions of families to make ends meet. Wittman prioritized tax breaks for billionaires over American families.
Wittman also opposed the American Families Plan, a “$1.8 trillion investment in children and families” to help them “recover from the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and existing gaps across our systems.” Wittman’s statement reveals his deep disdain for social safety nets:
“In each case, the Biden Administration’s answers always seem to be massive spending bills expanding the government’s role in public life.”
So when the U.S. government does step up to help families avoid poverty, Wittman does his utmost to erect a blockade. And Wittman’s objection to “expanding the government’s role in public life” is hypocritical in light of his support for laws that extend government regulation to the physical bodies of people who are pregnant or who might become pregnant.
Wittman’s family-focused bills are few and far between, revealing his hypocrisy as a representative who claims to value families so much. Instead, when families need him to show up, Wittman shows himself out. And his personhood and adoption bills threaten the bodily autonomy of pregnant people and prioritize family separation as the best solution for poverty.
Wittman supports Trump policies that destroy family unity
Wittman’s silent complicity erodes the ability of American families to function on a daily basis. Parents who have to work multiple jobs just to survive in the economic wreckage of the Trump Administration have less time and fewer resources to devote to their children’s upbringing. Wittman’s vote to give an obscene amount of funding to DHS means immigrant families face the constant, looming threat of deportation. When ICE agents rampage wantonly through our neighborhoods, schools, and churches, killing mothers and sons, it’s neither safe nor healthy for any family — regardless of their immigration status, citizenship, economic status, or political affiliation.
Many of Wittman’s Congressional colleagues work to feed and educate children. Examples include LA-02 Representative Troy Carter’s RAYS Act (H.R. 7092) to help K-12 students more easily access mental health resources, and NM-03 Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez’s Every Child Deserves a Head Start Act of 2025 (H.R. 5774). But Wittman votes for legislation that lets ICE kidnap children and imprison them, sometimes in facilities thousands of miles away, separated from parents and guardians, removed from their homes, families, and schools — for crimes they did not commit.
What actions could Wittman take to support families?
Wittman should step up for families, not trample all over them. He could introduce bills for universal childcare and a Child Tax Credit, and advocate for a direct cash transfer program to help lift young parents out of poverty and secure housing.
He could oppose legislation that seeks to criminalize pregnant people. He could help enshrine reproductive freedom at the federal level, empowering people to grow their families at a time of their choosing, and removing legal barriers to necessary medical care.
Wittman could grow a spine and do everything within his power to stop the Trump administration from further dismantling the Department of Education.
He could work in conjunction with Virginia’s state representatives on policies that invest in families and provide them with long-term stability.
Valuing families is a popular thing to claim, and Wittman is a populist. But his actions and his votes have worked against families in VA-01. Families are poorer, less healthy, and less stable than ever before because of Wittman and the policies he supports.
What actions do you think Congressman Rob Wittman should take to support families? Let us know what you think by posting comments here or on any of our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, or Reddit.