In deceptively worded ballot proposals, activists are trying to subvert the standard legislative process and enshrine ‘abortion rights’ in state constitutions.
In deceptively worded ballot proposals, activists are trying to subvert the standard legislative process and enshrine ‘abortion rights’ in state constitutions.
A pro-abortion conglomeration, comprising groups such as the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and NARAL, is working to enshrine radical abortion access in conservative-leaning states through a legislative back door.
The mark? Any red state that allows for ballot measures to amend the state constitution.
The goal? Subvert the standard legislative process and enshrine “abortion rights” into the state constitution through a one-off special election.
It’s a clever strategy: With just one well-coordinated special election, the pro-abortion caucus can cement abortion access, during all nine months of pregnancy, into the constitution of a state that otherwise has supported limits on the procedure. This strategy has been put in play in conservative-leaning states such as Ohio, Nebraska, Missouri, and Florida.
In general, those who oppose unlimited abortion access are not as politically active as those who support it. In other words, those who support access to abortion in all cases up to the point of birth are much more likely to head to the polls for a special election than the average voter who thinks abortion access should be limited to some degree.
To begin with, special elections have lower turnout rates when compared with general elections. In Ohio, with a population of nearly 12 million, fewer than 4 million turned out to vote last year on Issue 1, the ballot measure that “guaranteed the right to abortion” in the state. In a general-election year, voter turnout in Ohio is closer to 6 million.
Those who oppose unregulated abortion access across all three trimesters make up the silent majority in the U.S. They have been drowned out by a well-funded and loud minority that seeks to remove all restrictions on abortion. According to a 2023 Gallup poll, 69 percent of Americans say abortion should be legal in the first trimester, while support drops to 37 percent for the second trimester and 22 percent for the third.
In other words, only one-fifth of Americans believe that abortion should be legal throughout all nine months, and the vast majority support access to abortion only through the first trimester. The pro-abortion groups behind the state ballot initiatives are aware of the unpopularity of third-trimester abortion and so veil the true meaning of the proposed amendments in deceptive language.
Katie Daniel, the state policy director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, has confronted this problem in ballot initiatives across the U.S. “Abortion activists know they must cloak their amendments in misleading words because abortion in the second and third trimesters is incredibly unpopular, and so is taking away parental rights and eliminating health protections for women,” she told National Review.
For example, in Ohio, the first sentence of Issue 1 was worded as follows:
The proposed amendment would: Establish in the Constitution of the State of Ohio an individual right to one’s own reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion.
“An individual right to one’s own reproductive medical treatment” certainly sounds better than “allowing non-physicians to perform abortions up until birth,” but the amendment effectively accomplishes the latter.
Additionally, the passed amendment ends parental notification and prevents parents from being involved in any of their child’s medical decisions that can be categorized as “reproductive healthcare,” which includes irreversible sex-change operations. The amendment also abolishes the safety standard that chemical abortions must take place under medical supervision, and that procedural abortions must be performed by a licensed doctor who can have a woman admitted to a hospital if there are complications.
The national pro-abortion network has succeeded in states such as Ohio and Kansas, and there are currently heated battles in 13 others — including Florida, Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, and Missouri — over abortion ballot proposals.
Currently, a case is being argued before the Florida supreme court on a similar ballot proposition funded by the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, among other groups. “Floridians Protecting Freedom” is the misleading name of the group campaigning to enshrine abortion access in the Sunshine State’s constitution. The group calls on Floridians to “Vote Yes on 4,” claiming that “the overwhelming majority of Floridians think we should all have the freedom to make our own personal health care decisions without interference from politicians.”
In fact, the text of the amendment — and its actual effect — focuses solely on abortion access. “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” Without a clear definition of “viability,” the law would enable abortions up to the third trimester for any reason, and it would allow abortions into and through the third trimester if a “healthcare provider” — i.e., any Planned Parenthood employee — deemed it fine.
Last fall, Florida attorney general Ashley B. Moody filed a brief with the Florida supreme court arguing that “the ballot summary vastly understates the potentially sweeping scope of the amendment, by failing to explain what ‘viability,’ ‘health,’ or ‘healthcare provider’ means, and by not disclosing that a ‘healthcare provider’ might have power to determine when a baby is viable,” and that “the potential misinterpretations of the amendment would allow a healthcare provider to render nearly any abortion restriction a practical nullity.”
The case was argued on February 7; the court’s decision has yet to be released.
Floridians Protecting Freedom, which has already received over $17 million in funding to support its campaign and collect signatures, with over $5 million coming from the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, is seeking to avoid the standard legislative process in its effort to pass the amendment, according to the Miami Herald. “Floridians Protecting Freedom launched the Monday after Florida’s legislative session adjourned,” the paper reported. “That was intentional. Campaign director Lauren Brenzel said the group didn’t want politicians to change the initiative process to try to stop the effort.”
In Missouri, a similar initiative is under way. Another deceptively named organization, Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, proclaims vaguely that “Missourians deserve a voice in their health care decisions” and “that patients and their doctors should decide what’s right for their unique situation, not politicians.”
Like “Vote Yes on 4” in Florida, what the proposed amendment in Missouri would actually do is throw open abortion access, enshrining in the state constitution the “right” to abortions up to the point of birth.
The proposed amendment states that “the general assembly may enact laws that regulate the provision of abortion after Fetal Viability provided that under no circumstance shall the Government deny, interfere with, delay, or otherwise restrict an abortion that in the good faith judgment of a treating health care professional is needed to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant person.”
As in the Florida amendment, a “health care professional” under the Missouri proposition could be most anyone employed by Planned Parenthood, an organization (with nearly $2 billion a year in total revenue) that stands to gain financially from the legalization of abortions up until birth. The proposed amendment would also eliminate parental rights regarding their children’s health care, not merely on reproductive questions.
Missouri has always leaned pro-life in its legislation; even before Dobbs, the state had set limitations on abortion. House Bill 126, signed into law in the spring of 2019, contained trigger bans to ensure that abortion would be banned at the earliest gestational age possible, on the assumption that liberal state courts would challenge the law. After Dobbs, which returned the issue of abortion to the states, Bill 126 automatically banned abortion at all stages, making Missouri one of the first states to do so.
However, the law — as with all abortion bans across the U.S. — provided an exception for any case in which the health of the mother is at serious risk. Prior to the Dobbs decision — and Missouri’s ensuing law banning abortions apart from cases that involved threats to the health of the mother — the state still permitted abortion if the health of the mother was at stake.
Stephanie Bell, from Missouri Stands with Women, noted that Dobbs simply allowed for federalism. “There’s a reason I live in Missouri and not in California,” she told NR. But she suggested the ballot-initiative campaigns aim to subvert that system. “We’re seeing national groups — out-of-state groups — use the initiative-petitioning process and come in to try and influence policy in Missouri rather than allow the folks that I elected to be my representatives and protect the things, the values, that I share with them. We’re seeing these out-of-state groups come in and try to influence that.”
Seventy-seven percent of adults in Missouri are Christian, and 71 percent of Missourians identify as conservative or moderate in their political views. Unrestricted access to abortion is and always has been unpopular in the state — even though Missourians for Constitutional Freedom is trying to spin another narrative.
These ballot initiatives, and others like them, do not merely open access to abortion through all three trimesters, but they establish a host of changes to state practices and norms regarding health care with a single, deceptively worded amendment.
Citizens across the U.S. need to read the fine print and know what pro-abortion extremists are trying to sell them.