Some Virginia Democrats want to codify abortion rights into state law in their final weeks in power. But several state senators do not want to upend their travel to Hawaii, Europe and Africa.Democrats have less than a month left controlling Virginia before Republicans take over the House of Delegates and the governor’s mansion. With the clock ticking, many in the party want to seize what they see as a fleeting opportunity: protecting abortion rights by codifying them into state law.But Democratic leaders in the State Senate have dismissed the idea — and not on policy grounds or over concerns about political messaging. Several of the chamber’s members don’t want to change their vacation plans.One senator is traveling in Africa. Others are in Europe. And the majority leader is headed to Hawaii.“They’re not going to be able to get back; flights are booked this time of year,” the majority leader, Richard L. Saslaw, said in an interview from California, where he was en route to the Aloha State. The state’s General Assembly does not allow proxy or remote voting, and Democrats’ paper-thin majority in the State Senate requires all members to be present to pass contentious legislation.“We discussed it,” Mr. Saslaw said. “There are too many people out of town.”As abortion rights stand on a national precipice, with the Supreme Court likely to roll back or overturn Roe v. Wade next year, Democrats have issued dire warnings about the potential consequences, which could include at least 22 states moving swiftly to ban or severely restrict abortion access. The party’s options are limited at the federal and state levels, but many of its lawmakers have vowed to do whatever they can to protect the right to an abortion.Yet as the intraparty dispute in Virginia shows, the party’s leaders are often wary about confronting the issue head-on. Congressional Democrats have been unable to pass legislative proposals to protect abortion federally, and President Biden has yet to utter the word “abortion” publicly.Many lawmakers in the party, as they continue to grapple with the pandemic and economic uncertainty, seem unwilling to prioritize abortion rights to the degree that some Democrats believe is necessary given the threats from the Supreme Court and conservative state legislatures.In Virginia, where Gov. Ralph Northam has long been a champion of abortion rights, Democrats’ 21-to-19 majority in the State Senate includes moderates and one member who opposes abortion rights.But beyond abortion politics, there is a split in Richmond between younger and more activist Democrats in the State House, and Senate Democrats who adhere more to the old “Virginia way” of doing state business. They are less willing to embrace extraordinary measures that go beyond the state’s regular legislative sessions, which are held only at the beginning of each year and are finished for 2021.Sally Hudson, a Democratic delegate from Charlottesville, said she worried that the administration of Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, would roll back expansions of reproductive health care access, like the abortion pills that became available by mail in the state in October.Gov. Ralph Northam, right, has long been a champion of abortion rights, but Democrats are worried that his Republican successor, Glenn Youngkin, left, will roll back abortion rights.Steve Helber/Associated Press“We’ve got two years to do our job each term, and I don’t know why we wouldn’t use all the time to do our jobs during that term,” Ms. Hudson said. “If not for Roe, for what?”Abortion rights activists say the situations in Virginia and Washington underscore a lack of true commitment from Democrats, who have spent years campaigning on preserving the constitutional right to an abortion.“The Democratic Party is clueless right now about the abortion access crisis, and it’s really dispiriting to see them trumpeting the same old rallying cries,” said Erin Matson, a founder of Reproaction, an abortion rights advocacy group.Democrats in the Virginia Senate argue that it would be impossible to call the chamber back to Richmond in the next month, and that even if they did, there was no guarantee that the party would have enough votes.“You’re in the holiday season — some people are making plans of being away,” said Creigh Deeds, a Democratic state senator from Bath County. “What’s your reality of getting people to Richmond, and what’s realistic to pass that we haven’t already passed?”It is an echo of Democrats’ rationale in Congress, where their proposals stand little chance of becoming law under the Senate’s current legislative rules, which require 60 votes to proceed. A liberal group of senators trying to change those procedures to enact voting rights legislation has so far been thwarted by a few centrist Democrats.In Virginia, Democrats considered taking action in November as they reeled from their electoral losses but decided against it. Then a series of Supreme Court rulings and hearings on abortion rights heightened the urgency for Democrats, with Republicans set to take the House majority on Jan. 12. Mr. Youngkin will be inaugurated as governor three days later.Tarina Keene, the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, an abortion rights group, said she had first proposed a postelection legislative session to address abortion rights in the two days immediately after the November election, when Democrats were stunned by Republicans’ victories in the state.Ms. Keene said part of her argument to Virginia Democrats was that Republicans in other states, facing the imminent loss of statehouse control, had used lame-duck sessions to cement an advantage for themselves before Democrats took office.“We definitely mentioned to folks that they would do that to us,” Ms. Keene said. “We’ve seen in it North Carolina and in Wisconsin,” she said. “Those are two very recent examples of what they’re willing to do to undermine the other side.”Katherine White, who runs Network NoVA, a collective of dozens of liberal organizations in the Washington suburbs, has begun a campaign to pressure Virginia’s Democratic senators to return to Richmond.She said Democrats’ overconfidence that their candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe, would win had left them unprepared for the question of protecting abortion rights.“There was no plan to go big and go bold, because they didn’t plan on losing,” she said.Since Virginia Democrats took control of Richmond in early 2020, they have fulfilled their promises to roll back Republican-enacted abortion restrictions. But they have left the door open for Mr. Youngkin to place administrative roadblocks in the way of abortion access.Mr. Youngkin downplayed his opposition to abortion rights in his general-election campaign. But in June, he was caught on an undercover video taken by a Democratic activist, saying he would go “on offense” if he won and Republicans took control of the House of Delegates.A Youngkin spokesman said the governor-elect’s previous remarks on abortion spoke for themselves. Mr. Youngkin has said that changing abortion law is not on his “Day 1” agenda, but he also reiterated last month that he would support a ban on most abortions after 20 weeks.Still, despite the potential for changes to the state’s abortion laws, Mr. Saslaw dismissed the prospect of convening his chamber before the incoming governor’s inauguration. He said the possibility had been discarded in November by Democratic state senators — many of whom, including him, have campaigned on pledges to protect abortion rights.“They didn’t want to do it,” he said Wednesday.Of the 15 states where Democrats control both state legislative chambers and the governor’s office, Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico are the only ones that have not enshrined a woman’s right to an abortion into law. Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via Associated PressEven before the current Supreme Court cases from Mississippi and Texas that could weaken or overturn Roe v. Wade, many abortion rights supporters believed their movement faced an existential crisis.This year, states have enacted 106 abortion restrictions, the most passed since Roe was decided in 1973, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a liberal research group.Of the 15 states where Democrats control both state legislative chambers and the governor’s office, Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico are the only ones that have not enshrined a woman’s right to an abortion into law. Other states, like California and New York, have gone even further, positioning themselves as refuges for women barred from seeking abortions elsewhere.In Virginia, Mr. Saslaw’s position has angered Democratic state delegates, who during a Sunday night conference call pressed Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn to push to bring both chambers back into session.Ms. Filler-Corn told them that she would happily bring them back to Richmond but that Mr. Saslaw was strident in his opposition, according to several delegates who participated in the call. Ms. Filler-Corn, in a statement issued by her spokeswoman, said there was “no consensus” among House Democrats about convening before Mr. Youngkin’s inauguration.Kathleen Murphy, a Democratic delegate from McLean, predicted that women would become outraged next year if Mr. Youngkin moved to restrict abortion access.“This can be taken away from all of us, from all women, just because the Senate has made it clear that they will not come back to deal with the issue in a timely way,” she said.

As the president took forceful new steps to pressure Americans to get inoculated, he argued that they were urgently needed health measures. In his allies’ view, they were also good politics.FAIRFAX, Va. — Terry Orie, a 61-year-old real estate agent, has skipped vacations because of the pandemic. She has canceled plans with friends. She has bristled at the frustrations of communicating with clients when everybody is wearing masks.Ms. Orie is fed up with the coronavirus’s effects on her life. And she knows exactly whom to blame. “I don’t get it, I don’t get why they don’t wear masks and why they won’t get vaccinated,” she said Friday, sitting outside a Whole Foods in Fairfax with her 14-year-old toy poodle, Tootsie. “People think it’s their God-given right to put everybody else’s health at risk.”After he resisted comprehensive vaccine mandates for months, President Biden’s forceful steps on Thursday to pressure the 80 million unvaccinated Americans to get their shots put him squarely on the side of what had been a fairly quiet but increasingly frustrated majority: vaccinated Americans who see the unvaccinated as selfishly endangering others and holding the country back.The new federal rules — including a requirement that private-sector businesses with more than 100 workers require vaccinations or frequent testing — are a sharp pivot for the administration, which had feared that a heavy-handed approach would be viewed as government overreach and be met with even fiercer opposition from those leery of getting the shot. But with the Delta variant surging, overwhelming I.C.U.s and creating a fresh drag on the still-fragile economic recovery, failing to take more aggressive action was even riskier, both to public health and to Mr. Biden’s political standing, White House allies said.Already, there were signs that voters were unhappy with Mr. Biden’s initial response. Since the administration heralded its progress overcoming the pandemic on July 4, the unchecked spread of the virus this summer, and the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, contributed to a notable drop in the president’s approval rating.Now, by taking direct aim at the unvaccinated and Republican officials who encourage or condone their refusal, Mr. Biden is returning to a central posture of his campaign, casting himself as a sober voice on behalf of science and reason standing up to an angry and conspiratorial minority.The approach has already been road-tested by other Democrats on the ballot this fall.In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom surged in the polls after pivoting to a message that highlighted his support for masking and vaccine mandates while raising alarms that Republicans would undo those public health measures, linking those vying to replace him to Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, among others.In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, has attacked his Republican opponent for opposing vaccine mandates and ripped into a group of anti-vaccine protesters as “knuckleheads” who have “lost their minds.” And in Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, the former governor trying to win back his old job in November, is leaning hard into a message that he would be a stronger champion for widespread vaccinations than his Republican counterpart, Glenn Youngkin, a former private-equity executive.Polling from across the country shows that broad numbers of Americans support tightening vaccine requirements for schools, hospitals and workplaces. Majorities favor showing proof of vaccination to travel by airplane, attend a concert, eat at a restaurant or stay in a hotel. And most vaccinated voters blame the unvaccinated — not the administration — for the skyrocketing resurgence of the virus.“People are frustrated,” Mr. McAuliffe said in an interview. “They’re frustrated because people won’t get vaccinated. I’m running against a guy who has told college students: ‘You don’t want to get it? Don’t get it.’”The potency of vaccines as a wedge issue can be seen in Mr. Youngkin’s needle-threading response: While he is running an advertisement urging Virginians to join him in getting vaccinated, he remains opposed to the state or the federal government mandating one.“We have to just respect people’s ability to express their liberty to say, ‘No, I’m not going to get this vaccine for whatever reason,’” Mr. Youngkin said last month on a conservative talk-radio show. Through an aide, Mr. Youngkin declined an interview request.Other Republicans have gone even further, with governors in states including Nebraska, Texas and Georgia pledging to sue to stop the new rules. “See you in court,” Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota wrote on Twitter.Republicans are not the only Americans hesitant to get vaccinated, a group that includes a broad range of people driven by a variety of fears, including concerns about safety — often heightened by misinformation on the internet falsely claiming that vaccines cause dangerous side effects — and distrust of the pharmaceutical industry and the federal government. Others are motivated by religious beliefs; some merely lack access to health care.And a significant number of Republicans have become more willing to be inoculated since the spring, polling shows: Vaccine hesitancy declined among Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters from 40 percent in April to 29 percent in early September, a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found.That doesn’t mean they embrace mandates.Renee Watson, 57, an information-technology security engineer, said she was anxious before getting the vaccine and did not believe mandates would work.“The unvaccinated are beginning to feel discriminated against,” she said while eating a salad outside the Fairfax Whole Foods. “When you start to mandate people put something in their body, people get upset about limiting their personal choice and freedoms.”Some Republican strategists say that Mr. Biden’s push will only prompt their voters to dig in their heels and become even more resistant to vaccination.“The right thing healthwise is to get more people vaccinated of their own volition,” said Brad Todd, a consultant whose clients include Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rick Scott of Florida. “The right of the country wants to make its own decisions and will do a lot of things to prove that.”But Democrats believe that mandates are necessary to slow the spread of the pandemic, and are also good politics. How Mr. Biden handles the pandemic now, they argue, will set the tone for the midterm elections, which many party strategists believe will be won or lost over how Americans feel about the lingering impact of the virus on their pocketbooks, schools and jobs.Democrats also see a political advantage in running against Republican governors who rejected public-health measures like masking and vaccine mandates — much as they sought to depict Republicans as extreme and unreasonable during the Trump administration and came away from the 2020 election with control of the White House and Congress.“Have at it,” Mr. Biden said on Friday when asked about Republican threats to sue his administration over the mandates. “I am so disappointed that particularly some of the Republican governors have been so cavalier with the health of these kids — so cavalier for the health of their communities.”For some voters, Mr. Biden is simply channeling their own exasperation.“I spent the first year of Covid scared that we were going to kill my dad. Now that he’s fully vaccinated, I’m scared that I’m going to hurt my kids,” said Ravi Grivois-Shah, a family physician and school board member in Tucson, Ariz., who lives with his 74-year-old father and three children. “I’m sick of being scared. I’m sick of having to go through this again.”Those frustrations resonate even in some of the most heavily vaccinated corners of the country.Fairfax, where 86 percent of adults have had at least one vaccine shot and 80 percent are fully vaccinated, holds the highest vaccination rate in Virginia. It sits at the heart of the wealthy Washington suburbs and is home to thousands of federal government employees and contractors who will be required to get vaccinated under Mr. Biden’s new rules.Some have already imposed a version of their own personal vaccine mandates.Chris Gibson, a former Department of National Intelligence employee, described an ordeal this summer in which he had disinvited friends from a group vacation because they had chosen not to get vaccinated. Like so much of life during the pandemic, Mr. Gibson said, it was a frustrating demonstration of the futility of trying to persuade some people to make choices that benefit both themselves and the public’s health.“I feel we have to deprogram these people who refuse to get vaccinated,” he said. “In cults, you can’t just tell people what you’re doing is not right.”Reporting was contributed by