Republicans' Fake Ballot Measures

The GOP plans to trick voters on abortion rights

After nearly two years of losing elections, Republicans think they have an answer to their abortion problem: If you can’t beat them, pretend to be them.

With Americans furious over bans, support for abortion right skyrocketing, and the issue winning every ballot measure since Roe was overturned, conservatives’ new strategy is to propose ‘pro-choice’ amendments of their own. Disguised as initiatives to protect abortion rights, these measures would actually trick voters into codifying Republican bans.

In Arizona, for example, Republicans are considering a ‘pro-choice’ amendment to distract from anger over the 1864 ban and to undercut a real abortion rights measure. A leaked strategy document shows that the amendment would claim to protect abortion up until 15 weeks, but be made toothless by restrictions enshrined alongside it.

Republicans are even tossing around feminist-sounding names like the “Arizona Abortion Protection Act” and the “Arizona Abortion and Reproductive Care Act.” The goal is to make Arizonans believe they’re voting to protect abortion rights while directing them away from the measure that would actually do so.

Something similar is happening in Nebraska, where a coalition of anti-abortion groups proposed a measure they hope will distract from a genuine abortion rights amendment. After the pro-choice group Protect Our Rights launched a ballot initiative to protect abortion until ‘viability’, conservatives proposed a similar-sounding amendment, Protect Women and Children. This measure would supposedly allow abortion in the first trimester.

But the Nebraska amendment wouldn’t actually make abortion more available. Just like the proposal the Arizona GOP is considering, it’s a massive deception. Nebraska already has 12-week ban; that means this ballot measure would codify a Republican ban into the state constitution, making it virtually repeal-proof. Still, to trick voters, anti-abortion politicians are calling the measure “a second, better choice.” (It is not a coincidence that this amendment has been endorsed by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Nebraska Right to Life, and the Nebraska Family Alliance.)

Republicans trying to fool voters by using pro-choice rhetoric isn’t new. When an anti-abortion amendment was on the ballot in Kansas in 2022, conservative groups sent voters misleading text messages telling them to “Vote YES to protect women’s health.” (A ‘yes’ vote would have removed abortion protections.) And when Virginia Republicans were pushing a 15-week ban, they insisted the law wasn’t a ‘ban’ at all, but an effort to “keep abortion legal” for the first weeks of pregnancy.

In a moment when Americans overwhelmingly want abortion to be legal, Republicans are desperate to sound as reasonable, moderate, and even as ‘pro-choice’, as possible. Their extremist talking points haven’t worked; that’s why they’ve shifted from taking about ‘bans’ and abortion being ‘murder,’ to using words like ‘consensus’ and ‘compassion.’ Conservatives need voters to believe that they’re seeking some sort of middle ground.

The truth? They will say anything to ban abortion and to keep it banned. They’d rather craft elaborate, deceptive ballot measures than lift wildly unpopular and unwanted restrictions. And they’d rather frame their policies as pro-choice than risk losing another vote.

The good news is that all of this means conservatives’ current tactics aren’t working. Their messaging is failing miserably, and every effort to stop ballot initiatives has reminded Americans that Republicans are passing these bans against our wishes. When the Ohio GOP held a special election to raise the standards on ballot measures, for example, voters saw it for what it was. When Missouri Republicans delayed approving the language for a pro-choice measure, it was clear they did so out of fear of giving voters a choice.

And while I don’t expect anti-abortion lawmakers to stop their attacks on democracy in order to keep bans in place, I do think they realize that Americans are on to them. That’s why so many of them are talking about “the will of the people” these days—conservatives know they need to feign caring about what voters want, even as they work to stop us from having a say.

We can’t let this kind of trickery go unchecked. If those who would see abortion banned believe that it’s what Americans want, then why work so hard to fool voters? If they’re so sure that this is a ‘pro-life’ country, why lie about what their policies would do?

If the only way the anti-abortion movement can win is by pretending to be us, let’s remind voters that they don’t have to settle for a poor imitation.