Pro-abortion advocates shift focus to state ballot initiatives to cement and expand abortion

Pro-abortion ballot initiatives are being proposed for the 2023 and 2024 election cycles in an effort to thwart pro-life victories gained after the Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The move is being fueled by pro-abortion wins in multiple states during the recent election cycle where pro-life ballot measures failed and pro-abortion measures passed. These measures actually served to remove even the protections for preborn human beings that were in place during Roe. The strategy also involves pro-abortion efforts at the local city and county levels to deprioritize and fund abortion and to target pro-life pregnancy help centers.

“In every state where voters were asked to weigh in directly on abortion rights, they supported measures that protect those rights and rejected initiatives that could threaten them,” reported NPR following the 2022 mid-terms. “Those victories have abortion rights advocates looking at where they can next take the fight directly to voters.” NPR is a notable pro-abortion outlet.

What’s not mentioned by NPR is the fact that pro-abortion propaganda, deception, and misinformation can largely be credited for the success of these measures (as well as some significant funding from out-of-state pro-abortion billionaires like George Soros and Michael Bloomberg). Some of these states, as a result, now label abortion as a “right,” removing any meaningful protections from humans in the womb regardless of gestational age. In other words, the measures are even more pro-abortion than Roe was.

Abortion advocates eye multiple states

“Proponents of abortion rights are eyeing 10 states where citizens can mount initiatives to amend their state constitutions and where abortion access is currently restricted as possible battlegrounds for ballot measures,” CBS News reported earlier this month.

This was confirmed by Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who told NPR that the legal group is looking at several states as potential targets for future ballot campaigns, including Ohio and Florida. In addition, ACLU’s senior political strategist, Carolyn Ehrlich, said the ACLU had been contacted by partners in at least a dozen states regarding similar campaigns.

The ACLU’s enthusiasm for a culture of death was joined by Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which is spearheading pro-abortion efforts in Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas and South Dakota, among others.

“Ballot measures, where they are available, offer citizens a workaround past ideological extremism, gridlock, the failure to govern, and in this instance, the opportunity to say, ‘Some rights are so fundamental, they need to be outside the political arena. We want these rights to be durable, to outlast any politicians’ tenure. This belongs in our state constitution, this isn’t up to you,'” Hall told CBS News. “They’re starting now, because the process for getting any type of measure on the ballot takes a very long time.”

“Only 17 states allow citizens, not just lawmakers, to initiate ballot proposals to amend the state constitution,” reported PewTrust.org.

“Among those, abortion rights supporters in at least 10 states with abortion bans or tight restrictions — Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma and South Dakota — are already discussing strategies and tactics for putting abortion initiatives on the 2024 presidential election ballot,” PewTrust.org reported.

In addition, CBS News reported that pro-abortion activists are looking into initiatives in Colorado.

States considering pro-abortion ballot initiatives

Missouri: Abortion advocates in Missouri, which currently protects most preborn babies, are considering a 2024 pro-abortion ballot measure to repeal the state’s protections for preborn human beings.

Julie Lynn, spokeswoman for Advocates of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, told the St. Louis Post Dispatch that “people are looking at all options to try and regain access to abortion in Missouri, and that is one of the possibilities.”

The Washington Post noted, “Republicans, who have a majority in the state legislature, are pushing efforts to make the initiative petition process more onerous.” Samuel Lee, director of the Campaign Life Missouri, told KMOV.com that the pro-life community is considering its own measure to protect preborn lives.

New Jersey: Lawmakers were looking into a ballot measure for next year which would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, reported the Washington Post. But the move received negative input from mainstream pro-abortion groups, fearing the measure “would have produced an unintended adverse effect and potentially brought our right to abortion backwards in our state.” So it was rescinded.

Ohio: The effort to codify a ‘right’ to abortion in Ohio has already begun. According to Cleveland.com, “Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, one of the groups involved, already is accepting contributions on its website to pay for a campaign to pass such a constitutional amendment. It established a political action committee for the effort on Aug. 15, less than two weeks after the ballot measure to remove abortion rights in Kansas was defeated.”

But according to 13ABC.com, Republicans are pushing back. “Some top Ohio Republicans want to make it harder for citizens to lead ballot initiatives to enact constitutional amendments. Their goal is to raise the threshold to pass at the ballot box to 60% from its current 50%,” they reported.

Oklahoma: An Oklahoma hair stylist and abortion activist, Roger Coody, successfully filed his pro-abortion measure with the secretary of state. If certified, State Question 828 would have added a “right to reproductive freedom” to the state constitution.

In addition, according to the Journal Record:

• SQ 828 would “allow the state to regulate abortion after fetal viability, but not prohibit if medically needed to protect a patient’s life or physical or mental health.”
• SQ 828 would prohibit prosecution of an individual exercising reproductive freedom rights or anyone assisting another person enforcing those rights, thereby nullifying the provisions of House Bill 4327, which Gov. Kevin Stitt signed into law on May 26. HB 4327 is a copycat law, after a Texas measure, allowing any citizen to sue anyone believed to have performed an abortion or to have aided a pregnant person in obtaining an abortion.

However, just prior to publication, Live Action News discovered that the proposal was withdrawn with no explanation offered to the media. “Records show the proponents of the citizen-led initiative petition notified the Secretary of State’s office on Wednesday of their plans to withdraw,” reported Fox25.

South Dakota: A 2024 proposal, initiated Richard P. Weiland of Dakotans4fHealth.com, would create a right to abortion and “allow abortions through the first trimester of pregnancy,” CBS News claimed. “In the second trimester, the state could regulate abortion only if it ‘reasonably’ relates to the health of the mother,” CBS added.

A plurality of South Dakotans support the state’s current protections for preborn children, according to polling from this summer.

Texas: Last month, State Rep. James Talarico filed House Joint Resolution 56 (HJR 56), which reads, “The legislature shall not pass a law that abridges an individual’s access to abortion care if the individual’s decision to access abortion care is made in consultation with a licensed physician.” The “constitutional amendment limiting the legislature’s ability to prohibit abortion” is to be submitted to the voters November 7, 2023.

In other words, if a licensed physician who makes his or her living from committing abortions decides that he or she finds a patient’s decision to abort acceptable (which seems extremely likely, given the fact that this is how the physician earns his or her living), then the child can be legally killed. In such a case, this physician would stand to make income from the death of the child, which represents a conflict of interest.

“According to the Texas Legislative Council, a joint resolution like the one introduced by Talarico would need to receive a two-thirds vote of the total membership of each chamber for adoption,” KXAN reported.

Virginia: Democrats who control the state Senate there “plan to advance legislation that would start a multiyear effort to enshrine the right to an abortion into the state constitution. But it would almost certainly be voted down in the GOP-controlled House,” reported ABC News.

Abortion activists acknowledge that pro-abortion ballot initiatives are one tool they plan to deploy to try and gain lost ground.

“We did not get here by accident,” Sarah Standiford, national campaigns director for Planned Parenthood Action Fund, told CBS News. “The reality is there isn’t a magic bullet, but state action is what is required,” she said.

Pro-abortion legal experts agreed, telling PewTrust.Org that “ballot measures that enshrine abortion rights in state constitutions” are “the most enduring way to protect those rights from future political shifts.”