From the start the Pro-Life movement has been anti-democratic. The striking down of Roe vs. Wade was accomplished by a Supreme Court appointed by a Senate Majority, which did not represent the majority of U.S. voters. Poll after poll has shown that the majority of voters opposed the absolute form of anti-abortion law, the criminalizing of all abortions, including those resulting from rape and incest. The Supreme Court marshaled its 6-3 majority to overrule the majority of U.S. citizens.
On Tuesday, August 8, the State of Ohio put an initiative on the August ballot, for which a tiny minority of citizens will vote, to raise the percentage required to pass a Constitutional amendment to 60% of citizens casting their vote. As the New York Times reported, this August ballot comes after “Early this year, Ohio legislators ended the practice of regularly holding elections in August, pointing to the high costs and low turnout.” (August 8, 2023).
But the legislature decided it could afford one more August vote, because a vote on an abortion rights amendment to the state constitution was coming up in November. The threshold for passing a constitutional amendment in Ohio is currently a majority.
“This is 100 percent about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution,” Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican who’s also running for U.S. Senate, said. “The left wants to jam it in there this coming November.” In other words a majority vote should not be allowed to express the will of the voters.
An abortion rights amendment is also proposed for the fall ballot in Missouri, but the cost evaluation of the amendment has blocked it so far. Attorney General Andrew Bailey argued that the amendment would cost the state billions of dollars in unborn tax payers, but he was over-ridden by the Missouri Supreme Court, supporting the State Auditor Brian Fitzpatrick who put the cost to the state at $51, 000.
Next two Republican lawmakers filed against Fitzpatrick, saying that his estimate is “inaccurate and in a way that is both misleading to voters and obvious and curable by the auditor.” This is apparently re-litigating the same lawsuit brought by the attorney general, but it delays the attempts of supporters of the abortion rights proposal from gathering signatures to put the proposal on the ballot.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri complained, “This is another attempt by power-obsessed politicians to prevent Missourians from voting on reproductive rights. The bogus lawsuit parrots the already court-rejected claims of the attorney general.”
The constitutional amendment in question would outlaw penalties for both patients and physicians participating in reproductive-related care. Normally a petition can get on the ballot in an average of 56 days, but this petition has already taken 150 days. These nuisance lawsuits apparently attempt to prevent this petition from getting enough signatures to appear on the ballot.
Why would pro-choice advocates in a deeply Red state such as Missouri be so desperate to prevent a vote on the rights of pregnant women and their physicians? Because when the most recent poll asked potential Missouri voters if “you think it should be possible for a woman to legally obtain an abortion in the state of Missouri… in the first 8 weeks of pregnancy,” 58 percent of respondents said they agree, and 32 percent said they disagree. Ten percent said they were not sure.” (https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/politics/2022/08/26/missouri-poll-abortion-exceptions-incest-rape-gun-background-checks-popular/7888170001/).
The majority of voters appear to support reproductive rights within eight weeks of pregnancy, but that majority should not be permitted to vote on such an amendment, according to the litigants against the ballot proposal. The idea that voters should be allowed to express their will on the issue of abortion could be squashed in Missouri because of the time required to get the signatures to support the petition.
Voters of good faith may disagree on whether or on what terms abortion should be legalized, but voters have not been allowed to express the will of the people so far in Ohio and Missouri. Whether these proposals make the fall ballot in either state remains to be seen. One thing is evident–Pro-life legislators are desperately afraid of a democratic ruling on the topic of abortion rights.
There is a moral issue and a democratic issue on the legalizing of abortion. Moral convictions ought to be respected regardless of the numerous positions taken by people of good faith. But so should the will of voters be respected. The unscrupulous tactics of some Pro-life legislators is not justified by their moral convictions.
Voters should be allowed to express their beliefs at the polls on the legal rights of mothers and their physicians. Supreme Court rulings have consequences. So should the ballot decisions in every state, regardless of the convictions of a minority.