Voters Should Reject Pro-Abortion Deception This November

V oters in ten states face a monumental choice on Election Day this year. They can assent to the abortion industry’s demand for a radical regime of unsafe, unregulated, and unrestricted abortion, or they can preserve their freedom to act in the best interests of mothers and babies.

These states face proposed amendments to enshrine a dangerous “right” to abortion on demand in their constitutions. While the language of each amendment differs, they all have the same aim: to make the abortion industry unaccountable, especially to the women and children it harms, in pursuit of profits and an extremist ideology.

The amendments intentionally mislead voters into thinking they are supporting a reasonable compromise and not ceding their right to determine abortion policy in their states. The abortion industry’s rhetoric-rich but fact-deficient campaign supporting these amendments compounds its deception.

The amendments seek to eradicate the ability of voters, acting through their elected representatives, to adopt laws and policies that promote life and empower mothers. Under the proposed amendments, state legislatures cannot “interfere with” or “burden” the “right” to abortion. Virtually any abortion-related law arguably “burdens” or “interferes with” access to abortion. The amendments could endanger continued enforcement of these laws — such as informed-consent requirements or protections against aborting a child because of his or her race, sex, or disability.

The abortion industry would be emboldened to challenge any commonsense protections for mothers and their unborn children. These include laws that protect maternal health and safety, mitigate fetal pain, restrict particularly gruesome or barbaric abortion procedures, or preserve the integrity of the medical profession.

This is not mere speculation. After voters in Michigan and Ohio already approved similar abortion amendments, activists launched court challenges against informed-consent requirements, limits on taxpayer funding for abortion, and even Ohio’s protections for an unborn child after a heartbeat is detected. Citing the state’s new abortion amendment, an Ohio judge invalidated the heartbeat law on October 24, less than a year after the amendment was approved by voters. Legislation was also introduced in both states to repeal other widely supported abortion laws.

Such results go far beyond Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which recognized that a woman’s “right to abortion” was not “absolute” and that state regulation of abortion was appropriate to further state interests.

In a manipulative attempt to placate justified voter concern, the proposed amendments deceitfully claim to allow limits or restrictions on abortion later in pregnancy, most commonly after fetal viability.

But the amendments’ purported protections against inhumane late-term abortions are illusory. “Viability” is either not defined or inaccurately defined. And the amendments protect abortion when an abortionist determines it is “medically indicated” to protect the “pregnant patient’s life or health” — regardless of the gestational age of the unborn child. Unsurprisingly, little or no guidance is given for deciding when an abortion is “medically indicated.” These momentous decisions are instead left to financially interested abortionists, who profit handsomely from dangerous late-term abortions.

Under the amendments, taxpayers could be forced to fund elective abortions through their state income taxes — a result that most Americans oppose regardless of their views on abortion. Imagine going to work each day knowing that your labor could be used to line the pockets of Planned Parenthood. That is the reality that voters in these ten states face because, under the proposed amendments, failure to fund abortion could be seen as an improper “denial” of or “burden” on the “right” to abortion.

Laws protecting health-care professionals’ freedom of conscience and permitting them to opt out of performing abortions are similarly endangered. The abortion industry is likely to argue that such opt-outs result in an impermissible “burden” on the “right” to abortion. Abortion advocates disdain what they term “refusal clauses” and are unapologetic in their quest to destroy the freedom of health-care providers in the name of ubiquitous access to abortion.

Many doctors and nurses will choose to leave the practice of medicine altogether rather than risk having their consciences violated, compromising the availability and quality of care for all Americans.

But the abortion industry’s campaigns for pro-abortion amendments make no mention of these likely outcomes. Perhaps that is because they know that voters are much less likely to support its scandalous goals if they truly understand the negative consequences to women, children, taxpayers, and medical professionals.

American voters have a clear choice: empower a duplicitous and rapacious abortion industry interested only in profit and unparalleled autonomy, or maintain the freedom to protect life and the most vulnerable among us.