Republicans Want to Overturn Pro-Choice Ballot Measure Wins

11.13.24

Click to skip ahead: In Appointment Madness, the worst man taps the worst people. In the States, news in Idaho, North Carolina, California, and more. In the Nation, more on those split ticket voters. The Cruelty Is the Point reminds us that we can’t intellectualize away the fact that some people just like to see others suffer. In Ballot Measure Updates, Missouri Republicans are trying to sort out ways to quash Amendment 3. Anti-Abortion Strategy flags just one of the many bizarre tactics in Students For Life’s 2025 agenda. And in You Love to See It, some good news on an anti-abortion strategy, and the Women’s March 2025.

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Appointment Madness

Let’s get the awfulness out of the way, shall we? Donald Trump has nominated fellow sexual predator Matt Gaetz for attorney general of the United States. The Florida Republican has been the subject of an ethics probe over his possible role in sex trafficking a 17 year-old girl. POLITICO reports that even other Republicans are stunned over the pick, calling it a “gut punch.” Axios says one House Republican described being “disgusted.” (Cue the “I never thought the leopards would eat my face” song.)

As you can imagine, Gaetz is not exactly a friend of abortion rights. Mark Joseph Stern at Slate points out, for example, that “Americans should not be surprised if he launches prosecutions against abortion providers under the Comstock Act, including those located in blue states, if confirmed.”

In addition to tapping Gaetz for AG, Trump has announced South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as the homeland security secretary. Noem is best known for shooting a puppy and defending forcing 10 year-olds into childbirth. The disgraced president-elect also announced that Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon fucking Musk will head a new “Department of Government Efficiency”—that’s right, DOGE, like the meme. Because nothing says efficiency like getting two mediocre men to run one department.

Trump also picked Fox News personality Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense—a man who isn’t just wildly unqualified, but who also wants to ban women from serving in combat roles.

Axios has a full list of the nightmare blunt rotation here.

In the States

I told you yesterday about the case brought by four women who are suing Idaho after being forced to leave the state for care rather than carry doomed pregnancies to term. ABC News has a wrenching write-up of their Tuesday testimony—like Rebecca Vincen-Brown who cried while describing delivering her nonviable pregnancy in a hotel bathroom after having to drive seven hours out-of-state. Her other child was in the next room.

Plaintiff Kayla Smith and her husband not only had to drive eight hours to Washington for care; after being quoted between $16,000 and $20,000 for the procedure, they also had to take out a personal loan to cover the cost. (This is one of the reasons I find it so absurd to suggest that people just suddenly decide to get later abortion care.)

Then there was Jillaine St.Michel, also a plaintiff, who has since moved to Minnesota after being denied care in Idaho for her nonviable pregnancy:

“Knowing what I went through, knowing what the state's representatives have decided is acceptable reproductive care for women. I can't imagine my daughter and son receiving that kind of messaging.”

Remember, Idaho has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans; and their Republican Attorney General has been fighting for the state’s right to deny women life-saving abortion care in hospital emergency rooms. The state has also suffered a severe exodus of health care providers—Idaho has lost nearly 25% of its OBGYNs with hospitals shuttering maternity wards as a result. You can bet that the state’s maternal death rate has gone up as a result, but because Republicans disbanded the maternal mortality review committee, we’ll never know for sure.

As much as I hate giving oxygen to assholes, I had to make sure you saw this story out of North Carolina. A woman with a genetic disorder that causes serious fetal anomalies wrote to state Sen. Danny Britt about how North Carolina’s ban is preventing her from expanding her family. His response? "I suggest you move to China immediately and see how that works out for you.” The letter gets worse from there.

Now, I’m sure this guy was always terrible, but it’s not hard to imagine that last weeks’ election has emboldened the worst type of anti-abortion legislators. I always think back to the piece I wrote in 2022:

The Worst Guy You Know

Quick hits:

• KFF Health News covers the Maryland program to train more abortion providers;

• The Guardian has more on the pregnant Kentucky woman challenging the state’s abortion ban, pointing out that the suit is also requesting class-action status for all people in the state who may be pregnant or could become so;

• And I love this kind of service journalism: KQED in California lays out what the abortion law are in the state and what you can do if you’re denied care. (If you’re at a religious hospital, perhaps, or lied to by a crisis pregnancy center.)

In the Nation

Political pundits continue to wax philosophical about why we saw split tickets last week—voters who supported both Trump and pro-choice ballot measures. David Leonhardt at The New York Times writes that in part it was because Kamala Harris and Tim Wals “refused to answer questions about whether they supported any abortion restrictions.” (Which is demonstrably untrue.) The Washington Post posits that the pro-choice ballot measures “gave voters an attractive chance to split their ticket: to directly register their support of abortion rights and believe those rights would be protected, while voting in the presidential race on other issues (like the economy and immigration).”

And NPR—doing a deep dive into the data—quoted strategists who believe that voters simply took Trump at his word that he would leave abortion to the states. That’s where I tend to come down: Voters—Republican women, especially—believed that Trump wouldn’t make national moves against abortion and that states would be able to decide for themselves.

I also think white Republican women continue to believe that they will somehow be the exception to the rule, and that way too many voters didn’t understand that state protections wouldn’t help in the event of a national ban. As Emily Bazelon wrote this week, Trump’s abortion promises never addressed “how much this hinges on the choices of a presidential administration—especially for the availability of abortion pills.”

Some abortion rights activists are pointing to the split votes as evidence that ballot measure campaigns didn’t think through the national implications of what they were doing. Pamela Merritt, executive director for Medical Students for Choice, writes this at her Substack:

“[D]o y’all remember those social media posts announcing that folk ‘understand the assignment’ regarding what to vote for on election day? Well, ballot campaigns did not include voting for Dems in that assignment. As a matter of fact, the campaigns basically positioned abortion as a non-partisan issue and in doing so absolved white women of their responsibility to prevent a future national ban on abortion while Roeing their vote.”

I’ll give the last word to New York Times columnist (and certified genius) Tressie McMillan Cottom, who noted optimistically on The Daily Show that the split ticket votes show “that people actually can do nuance.” Cottom notes that’s actually good news for Democrats, “who are going to need a lot of split tickets coming up.”

I’m curious what you all think, so feel free to leave some thoughts in comments!

The Cruelty Is the Point

As we talk through why some people vote the way they do—whether on Trump, reproductive rights or anything else—it’s vital that we don’t forget the lesson detailed so brilliantly by Adam Serwer: The cruelty is the point. Especially when it comes to women and abortion.

As much as we want to analyze, comb through data, and think through electoral trends, we can’t forget the fundamental truth that some people simply like hurting others. I was reminded of this as I listened to yesterday’s episode of The Washington Post’s daily podcast. In it, Deborah Dorbert—a Florida woman forced to carry her doomed pregnancy to term and watch her son die—talked about her experience, and watching Amendment 4 ‘lose’ with 57% of the vote. But it was something else Dorbert said that really stuck with me:

“It has definitely changed my view of the United States and life itself, of just how much hate there is out there and how people judge one another and don't respect other people's opinions or perspectives or morals or values. And then I have, you know, some siblings, even after everything I went through, they still don't see anything wrong with what happened to me and that I was forced to carry to term. They are still against abortion and they don't see anything wrong with what I went through and how it has affected my life. Like, it is still impacting my life today, and it will probably take a long time for me to recover from this.”

And there it is. To many people—even those who say they care about us—women are meant to suffer. That we would expect otherwise is seen as unrealistic at best, and at worst, downright selfish. As difficult as that lesson is to learn, it’s a clarifying one.

There is no amount of story- or truth-telling about abortion or Trump that will convince some people that what’s happening to women in this country is wrong. Knowing that is helpful, because it means we don’t have to waste energy talking to those brick walls—and can build power instead.

Ballot Measure Updates

Missouri voters passed Amendment 3 last week, which protects abortion rights in the state constitution. But to no one’s surprise, Republicans are already trying to figure out how they can override the will of the voters. As I noted yesterday, GOP Rep. Justin Sparks is trying to block incoming House Speaker Jon Patterson from taking his leadership position because he had the temerity to say that Republicans should respect voters’ wishes.

Sparks—a guy so anti-abortion that he wanted to make it illegal for medical students to leave the state for abortion training—argued that “on day one, your speaker must address and tackle Amendment 3.” The Kansas City Star reports that this challenge to Patterson’s leadership “could set up an early test of how aggressive Republican lawmakers want to be about overhauling Amendment 3.”

What could Missouri Republicans actually do to stop the pro-choice measure from taking effect? Well, with GOP control of the legislature, Republicans could pass laws to limit abortion in spite of the amendment and bring the fight to the courts. Sparks, for example, talked about legislation to restrict abortion rights despite Amendment 3, claiming that “polls show that Missourians want restrictions on abortions.”

We also know that Missouri Republicans had been trying to raise ballot measure standards so that citizen initiatives would have to meet a much higher threshold to amend the state constitution. (Like Florida’s 60% threshold, for example, which staved off restoring abortion rights despite strong majority support.) But there would be a risk to doing that now: Amendment 3 has already passed, and raising the standards would make ballot initiatives harder for anti-abortion groups to pass a measure to repeal the new pro-choice protections.

I’m sure the Missouri GOP has other plans in mind, though, and I’ll make sure to keep you updated as I find out more. No matter what happens, Anamarie Rebori Simmons of Planned Parenthood Great Plains says, “We know anti-democratic lawmakers are eager to ignore the will of the voters, but I can assure you we’re not letting our foot off the gas now.”

While we’re talking about ignoring the will of voters, let’s get into Florida for a second. Now that Amendment 4 has ‘failed’ with 57% of the vote, anti-abortion activists have dropped their lawsuit claiming voter fraud in the signature-gathering process. It’s almost as if this was never about ‘voter fraud’ at all!

Last night, I spoke to Amendment 4 campaign director Lauren Brenzel about the ballot measure, the unprecedented attacks on democracy from Gov. Ron DeSantis, and what comes next for Florida abortion rights. Watch a short clip below and the full live-stream here.

Anti-Abortion Strategy

Students for Life of America (SFLA) has published their roadmap for a Trump presidency and it’s just about as crazy as you’d expect. For those unfamiliar: SFLA is one of the most influential and radical anti-abortion organizations in the country. Not only do they want abortion banned in all cases, they also want to make birth control illegal. (Infuriatingly, this is pretty much never mentioned when they’re quoted or covered in mainstream media outlets.)

I’ll do a deep-dive into their plans soon, but I had to flag one thing in their “Make America Pro-Life Again Roadmap” in the meantime. You may remember that way back in 2022, I told you about SFLA’s claim that mifepristone was poisoning the wastewater and threatening “endangered or threatened species or designated critical habitats.” In other words, they argued—without any basis in science or reality—that women flushing fetal remains after using abortion medication were hurting the environment.

They petitioned the FDA to stop dispensing the abortion medication using this argument, and later filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court with the same goal.

Coincidentally, the group had done some polling that found young voters care deeply about environmentalism. (Abortion bans, however, young people don’t like at all.) Essentially SFLA figured that pretending to care about the environment—even using terms like “environmental justice”—would go over a whole lot better than talking about limiting women’s rights. They’re also simply big fans of throwing anything they can at the wall.

Well, SFLA’s new roadmap relies heavily on this absolute bunk wastewater argument, framing it as a “Make America Healthy Again” initiative—a nod to RFK Jr.’s plan for a yet-unnamed role in the new Trump administration. In other words, they’re going to bring their craziest argument to the brain-worm guy. What could go wrong?

A couple of important reminders about this tactic: The abortion-is-ruining-the-water argument has nothing to do with the environment. (Shocking, I know.) What SFLA has recommended is that women who taken abortion medication be forced to bag up their bleeding and bring it back to their healthcare provider as ‘dangerous medical waste.’ Never mind that—as many who have had an early miscarriage or abortion can tell you—it’s near impossible to distinguish embryonic or fetal tissue from general bleeding.

As I’ve noted before, the idea here is to punish and shame patients who just want to end their pregnancies in the privacy of their own homes. Women who take abortion medication have robbed anti-abortion activists of their favorite past-time: shaming women. So if they can’t call these women sluts and murderers outside of clinics, they’ll figure out another way to humiliate them.

Indeed, Wyoming Sen. Tim Salazar says he’s going to introduce SFLA’s model legislation to mandate that patients using abortion medication collect and return their bleeding to doctors in medical waste bags. Ghouls.

Let’s also not forget something I said at the top: SFLA wants to ban birth control because they claim they’re ‘abortifacients’. If they are somehow successful in this nightmare, how long do you think it will be before they start arguing that hormonal birth control is poisoning the planet?

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You Love to See It

For the last few months, I’ve warned about a growing anti-abortion legal tactic: Crisis pregnancy centers claim that laws that stop them from lying to women are ‘free speech’ violations. The anti-abortion groups have been suing specifically over policies that stop them from promoting their bullshit ‘abortion reversal’ procedures.

But Bloomberg Law reports that two such cases were blocked in California and New Jersey recently. In California, a judge dismissed a suit from the Culture of Life Family Services, ruling that the group didn’t show that its free speech rights were harmed. And in New Jersey, a judge refused a request from First Choice Women’s Resource Center to stop the state attorney general’s investigation into whether they misled women. Both cases involve abortion ‘reversal.’

Obviously, both of these cases being in pro-choice states helps—and I’m sure we’ll see more of this strategy in the future. But these days, I’m taking my wins where I can.

In other good news, the folks behind the 2017 Women’s March—the largest single-day protest in the country’s history—are at it again. Organizers are calling people to Washington DC for a People’s March on January 18, 2025. Will you be there?