Ten states will vote on abortion this fall. This is what is at stake.

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By Ben Johnson
The Washington Stand

With all eyes focused on November’s presidential and congressional elections, voters risk losing sight of the crucial battlegrounds where the issue of protecting – or sacrificing – innocent lives is on the national agenda. Voters in ten states will vote on eleven ballot initiatives, almost all of which would open the door to an extension of the taking of innocent lives into the third trimester.

Voters will decide on abortion-related ballot initiatives in November in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and South Dakota.

“Americans will go to the polls to vote on the issue of life. They will be voting on whether or not they should protect life in their state constitutions and in their state laws,” Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told the Pray Vote Stand Summit (PVSS) 2024 last Friday in Washington, DC . “We are so grateful that they finally have the opportunity to do that – that the Supreme Court has finally recognized that Roe was wrongly decided, that Roe was an abomination in the Constitution, that the question of life now belongs to the people again and their elected representatives.”

Experts at the Family Research Center have compiled the facts about these post-Dobbs state abortion initiatives in a new document titled “Life on the Ballot.” The source briefly lays out the language that will appear on the ballot, as well as how each measure would affect state law, mothers and unborn babies if they were to take effect.

One initiative would establish a state marker against late-term abortion. If passed, Nebraska Initiative 434 would protect children from abortion in the second or third trimester, except those conceived through rape or incest, or when required by a “medical emergency.”

Nine of the 10 remaining pro-abortion initiatives would extend abortion until birth in their state constitutions, often with deceptive-sounding language. Confusingly, Nebraska voters will also decide Initiative 439, which would establish a fundamental right to abortion until viability — but an abortion doctor could perform an abortion after that point (generally considered 22 weeks) to protect the mother’s health. Nevada’s Question 6 also creates a right to an abortion performed by a “health care professional until the viability of the fetus or when necessary to protect the health of the mother.”

As when Roe v. Wade and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, were in force, the term “health” can be interpreted broadly to include everything from imminent death to financial harm. Nevada’s language could also allow non-physicians to perform abortions, which would lower the abortion industry’s costs — and reduce the quality of care mothers receive.

Many other initiatives are removing existing protections for mothers and their children. Arizona’s Proposition 139 would create a fundamental “right” to abortion under the state constitution. Under the terms, “all current laws protecting unborn children in Arizona would be removed, including the law protecting unborn children from abortion after fifteen weeks. This means that abortion would be legal during the ninth month of pregnancy,” the FRC document explains. It could force taxpayers to fund abortion, it could allow non-physicians to perform abortions, and it could increase the abortion trade (allowing abusers to take their victims to abortion doctors to get rid of the evidence of rape, incest or sexual exploitation).

The spread of the abortion pill, mifepristone, has allowed men to force women into unwanted abortions for at least 24 years. One of those victims shared her story with a PVSS panel on the right to life, moderated by Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at FRC.

Catherine Herring’s husband Mason repeatedly tricked her into taking abortion pills to abort their child in April 2022. “I got sick for the rest of the day, ended up in the emergency room and bleeding profusely,” she recalls. Luckily, she learned of the abortion pill reversal protocol and was told to take progesterone. “I think it really saved my daughter’s life,” Herring said. “Josephine is now two years old” and “the cutest thing you have ever seen.”

But after fighting for her daughter’s life, she had to fight for justice.

“One of the most shocking things about my story is that even being from the state of Texas, I might be interested in knowing the charges against my husband,” she told the PVSS audience. “He was sentenced to 180 days in jail. That’s it for seven attempts to end our daughter’s life.

Thanks to the state’s outdated laws, she had to lead a fight to “criminalize poisoning people,” Herring said. “Can you imagine even having to say that?”

Some of the ballot initiatives could remove protections for women in similar positions, experts say. And they can also endanger the rights of other individuals. Colorado Amendment 79 allows abortion on demand up to birth, opens the door to taxpayer funding of abortions, and threatens the conscience rights of Christians and other pro-life religious believers. It needs 55% support to pass in November.

Montana’s CI-128 would allow abortion until viability is established, with the exception of the “health” of the mother. It would also say the state cannot punish “patients, caregivers, or anyone else who assists someone in exercising their right to make and carry out voluntary decisions about their pregnancy.” Florida’s controversial Amendment 4 would allow abortion until it is viable, with expanded exceptions after the fact, striking down the state’s heartbeat law and a law that protects children from abortion to prevent fetal pain starting at 15 weeks. It would also erase parental consent or notification laws.

Some initiatives use vague and unclear language that could legalize “reproductive” measures that go far beyond abortion. Maryland’s Question 1 would authorize a constitutional amendment codifying the right to “reproductive freedom, including but not limited to” pregnancy-related decisions. Likewise, Missouri Amendment 3 would “establish the right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion and contraception.” The Missouri amendment also says it allows post-viability regulation, with a broad exception for the so-called “health” of the mother.

The imprecise wording of “reproductive freedom” in these two amendments is similar to that of Ohio’s Issue 1, which passed last November. It stated: “Every individual has the right to make and exercise their own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to” abortion. Just weeks after the election, Democrats in Ohio introduced the so-called “Reproductive Care Act” (HB 343), which stated that “reproductive health care … means gender-affirming care.”

Experts say the ballot initiatives could jeopardize women’s safety in another way: The Missouri amendment forces pregnancy centers to refer mothers to abortion facilities and eliminates ultrasound requirements, according to the new FRC source.

Pro-life women’s centers are already in the crosshairs, as vandals spray-painted or bombed scores of such facilities following the unprecedented Dobbs decision leak in May 2022.

“If the right person doesn’t come into power, this will escalate, not just for us, but for the thousands of Christian faith-based pregnancy centers in this country that do nothing but help a woman, whether she is rich or not . poor, wondering what she’s going to do,” said Janet Durig, executive director of the Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center, which was vandalized after the decision was leaked. Imagine a woman whose boyfriend left her when he found out she thought she was pregnant. Who is going to help her? How will she be?” she asked.

In light of the potential worsening of the fate of pro-life centers through measures like these, Durig encouraged pro-life advocates to “support pregnancy centers in your community” and “stand with them because the fight would be great .”

Pro-life centers have come under fire in New York, where Proposition 1 would further ban “disparate treatment based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability and sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity and pregnancy.” It also protects against ‘unequal treatment’ based on ‘reproductive health care and autonomy’.

South Dakota’s Amendment G would restore something similar to the Roe v. Wade settlement, which has claimed tens of millions of babies since 1973.

Senator Hawley, who made an impassioned plea for the Republican Party to “boldly and unapologetically” proclaim that “there is no right greater than the right to life,” said the post-Dobbs environment means Americans will have opportunities to protect – or destroy – life in all 50 states.

This decade will go down in history as “a time when our most fundamental beliefs – the right to life and liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the right to conscience, the right to worship the Lord as He calls us – were at stake.” , Hawley argued. .

Originally published on The Washington Stand!