Former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard supports a right to abortion, but she is nevertheless urging voters to oppose Michigan’s Prop 3, which would add an unlimited right to abortion to the Michigan state constitution.
“I want to urge Michigan residents and voters to protect women, to protect parental rights, and protect our kids by voting against Proposal 3,” Gabbard said in a short video released Sunday.
“It includes legal loopholes that allow late-term and partial-birth abortions, which essentially is really infanticide,” she said. “It also overturns a law that requires parents to know if their child is pursuing an abortion or gender-hormone therapies.”
Indeed, as National Review’s Madeleine Kearns reported in October, “Michigan Is Sleepwalking toward Abortion Extremism”:
If passed, Proposal 3 would effectively enshrine a right to abortion on demand up to birth, remove parental-consent requirements for minors seeking “reproductive care” (abortion, contraception, and sterilization), and prevent patients from filing malpractice lawsuits in the case of botched abortions. . . .
Prop 3’s opening statement reads: “Every individual has a fundamental right to reproductive freedom.” Not every woman. Nor even every adult. Every individual — no age specified. “Reproductive care,” meanwhile, includes not only a right to abortion but a right to contraception and sterilization as well. Under Prop 3, gender-confused minors could be subjected to puberty blockers, cross-sex drugs, and surgeries without parental consent or even notice.
Normally, patients are required to give informed consent to medical treatments and procedures. But, in Prop 3, this standard is lowered to “voluntary consent.” Worse, the state is prohibited from taking any “adverse action against someone for aiding or assisting a pregnant individual in exercising their right to reproductive freedom with their voluntary consent.” This could apply even to “someone” who is not a medical professional. […]
[Prop 3 allows] abortions even in the case of full-term and perfectly healthy unborn babies. So long as “in the professional judgement of an attending health care professional [abortion] is medically indicated to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual.” [emphasis added] In practice, all that’s needed to tick the “mental health” box is for a woman to express distress at continuing the pregnancy. This legal loophole is widely recognized to provide for abortion on demand which, in this case, could extend up to the moment of birth.
Third, consider how wide-reaching and absolute the provisions are. Under Roe and Casey, the “undue burden” standard proved compatible with a variety of pro-life laws from anti-discrimination laws based on race, sex, and disability to waiting periods and ultrasound requirements. But Prop 3 introduces a new standard of a “compelling state interest” with “the least restrictive means.” Moreover, the amendment defines the compelling state interest as being compelling only if it’s to protect the health of the individual seeking care, “consistent with accepted clinical standards of practice.” And who sets those clinical standards? Abortionists, of course.
The state’s Democratic governor and Prop 3 are favored in polls to prevail, but David Weigel writes today for Semafor: “Republicans have a shot at upset victories here, and believe that the Democrats’ urban turnout problems could be decisive.”