The Week in Abortion

(6.5.23 - 6.9.23)

Ballot Measure Updates

Republican efforts to stop ballot measures measures that could restore abortion rights in their states continue on—this week, we saw lots of news out of Missouri, Ohio, and South Dakota.

The biggest mess was in Missouri, where the ACLU is suing state Attorney General Andrew Bailey for his attempts to stall a pro-choice ballot measure from moving forward. Bailey has refused to sign off on the state auditor’s cost estimate for the measure—and abortion rights advocates can’t start collecting signatures until he does.

Reminder of what went down: State auditor, Scott Fitzpatrick, estimated that restoring abortion rights in the state would cost about $51,000. But Bailey pushed back, claiming that it would actually cost the state billions of dollars—and told Fitzpatrick to change the estimate accordingly. Emails obtained by the Missouri Independent show that even though Fitzpatrick is anti-abortion, he refused, saying it would “violate my duty as State Auditor.”

This week, a judge heard arguments in that lawsuit—and the ACLU pointed out that the delay was a clear tactic to try to prevent the proposal from getting in front of voters in 2024. (The ballot summary was supposed to be done by May 1.) Bailey’s office, however, says that if pro-choicers were worried about not having enough time to collect signatures, they should have started earlier.

This attack on the proposed amendment—which would enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution—comes after Missouri Republicans failed in their attempts to raise the standards on ballot measures. They wanted to require 57% of the vote to pass, instead of a simple majority. Just another reminder that conservative lawmakers have no interest in playing fair, or in what voters want.

We’ve been watching a similar attack on democracy play out in Ohio, where Republicans were successful in getting a August special election to try to raise the ballot measure standard up to 60% of the vote. The new standards wouldn’t just increase the percentage of voters necessary to pass a ballot measure, though—it would also mandate that pro-choice groups get a certain amount of signatures in every single county. (Right now, they just need to do so in half of the counties.) That means even if a majority of Ohians want abortion rights restored, rural areas could prevent it from happening.

And just like Republicans in Missouri, the Ohio GOP is being awfully sneaky about getting these new rules implemented via that special election. Republican lawmakers in the state explained their strategy recently to lobbyists, which amounted to: “Don’t say abortion…don’t say 60%…the focus will be on protecting the constitution from special interests.” So they want to require 60% of the vote for ballot measures but they don’t want to say 60%. Because they know it’s not what voters want!

For months, in fact, Ohio Republicans claimed that these ballot measure moves had nothing to do with abortion—instead claiming it was simply to prevent out-of-state special interests from changing the state constitution. (One state representative even called the idea that it was about abortion a ‘conspiracy theory’; then he wrote a letter to his colleagues explaining how it was about…abortion.) Now that lie has become too difficult to maintain. At a recent event, Secretary of State Frank LaRose said, “This is 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”

I wish I was done with the ballot measure bullshit, but not even close! In South Dakota, where abortion rights advocates have been fighting against a new rule preventing them from collecting signatures in one of the most popular places to do so, Republicans are also trying to convince voters that the proposed amendment is “far more extreme than Roe v. Wade.” (It’s not.) The Republican leading that charge, state Rep. Jon Hansen, also happens to be the vice president of South Dakota Right to Life. Because of course he is.

Just a reminder that South Dakota voters rejected abortion bans using ballot measure twice already—in 2006 and 2008. What’s more, a 2022 poll showed that most voters oppose the state’s abortion ban. Republicans are right to be scared.

In some positive ballot measure news, pro-choice activists in Florida have already collected 100,000 signatures in support of getting abortion rights in front of voters in 2024. Floridians Protecting Freedom reports that they only expected to get 3,000 by the end of May, so this is terrific news.

Florida abortion rights activists still have lots of work to do, though. In order to get the measure on the 2024 ballot, they’ll need to collect 900,000 signatures by February 1. And Republicans in the state were successful in raising ballot measure standards to require 60% of the vote in order to pass. (They are trying to increase it even more, to 67%.) The good news is that Florida voters support abortion rights: 64% believe abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances, and 75% oppose the state’s recently-passed 6-week ban.

What Conservatives Are Saying

I’ve been writing a lot about language lately. Whether it’s how to stop letting Republicans frame the debate, or paying close attention to the anti-abortion movement’s rhetorical tricks and strategies—it’s all so important. This week, I was focused on two things in particular:

Reframing the ‘middle’: For months, we’ve seen it in the way that Republicans are calling 12-week bans ‘reasonable’, and how Republicans like Rep. Nancy Mace are characterizing supporting birth control as a ‘compromise’. This week, though, we saw one of the most egregious examples of conservatives trying to reframe what the ‘middle ground’ on abortion means.

At a CNN town hall, presidential hopeful Nikki Haley said we should all be able to agree that women who have abortions shouldn’t get the death penalty—as if that was ever in question as being fucking insane! They’re moving the middle so far to the right, we’re about to fall off a cliff.

For more thoughts on ‘the middle’ and how to stop Republicans from leading the national conversation on abortion, check out last week’s column:

How to Talk About Abortion

Downplaying radical policy changes as ‘clarifications’ or ‘softening’: Part of why we’re seeing so much language about middle grounds and so-called ‘reasonable’ abortion bans is that Republicans know that their restrictions are incredibly unpopular. For that same reason, conservatives are characterizing anything they do to amend or add to their abortion bans as ‘clarifications’ or a ‘softening’ of their views.

We saw this in Wisconsin this week, for example, where Republicans introduced legislation to redefine abortion as an ‘intention’. It’s a dangerous and radical change: if abortion isn’t a medical intervention, but a feeling, it opens a whole new world of ways that women can be punished and prosecuted. But calling the legislation a ‘clarification’ or ‘softening’ is a very smart move; it’s meant to make Americans believe that conservative lawmakers are conceding something, even as they make the laws more dangerous. (We’ve also seen Republicans use language about ‘softening’ when adding exceptions to their abortion bans that do absolutely nothing.)

Other conservative talking points to watch out for:

• This week I flagged increased conservative chatter about ‘alternatives’ to abortion. But there is no ‘alternative’ to abortion. Adoption is an alternative to parenting, not pregnancy.

• The connection between anti-abortion & anti-trans attacks. In the Los Angeles Times, ACLU trans rights activist Chase Strangio pointed out how the language conservatives are using is “designed to appeal to people’s sense of disgust or fear or vulnerability”—terms like ‘late-term’ abortion, for example, or ‘genital mutilation’.

Anti-Abortion Strategy

There are two things from the last week that I think are especially important:

The first is the way that anti-abortion activists are targeting border towns in pro-choice states—pushing them to adopt anti-abortion ordinances despite state law. And while I’ve been reporting on this strategy for going on a year, what’s new is the increased harassment and violence at the clinics in these towns. Most recently, an abortion clinic in Danville, Illinois was been attacked twice soon after the city declared itself a ‘sanctuary for the unborn.’

Also this week, anti-abortion activists are asking the city council in Casper, Wyoming to adopt an ordinance condemning a local clinic—or to revoke its business license altogether—after it just re-opened after being destroyed by an arsonist. There is an indisputable connection between dangerous anti-abortion rhetoric, harassment, violence, and moves to target individual small towns and clinics.

The second thing to pay attention to is a new tactic in attacking birth control: Trying to confuse Americans about the difference between emergency contraception and abortion medication. Obviously, anti-abortion activists have long claimed that the morning-after pill is an abortifacient. But what I saw this week was something different—it was activists deliberately trying to conflate the two medications in the hopes of creating a controversy about college campuses dispensing abortion pills in vending machines. (They’re not, they’re dispensing emergency contraception—but if anti-abortion groups can confuse people enough, they’re hoping to plant that seed.) You can watch my TikTok about the strategy here.

Legal Challenges & Lawsuits

We’re waiting to hear from the Florida Supreme Court on a legal challenge to the state’s existing 15-week abortion restriction—a ruling that will determine whether or not the newer 6-week abortion ban goes into effect. The assumption is—because of how Gov. Ron DeSantis stacked the Court with conservative justices—that the Court will uphold the 15-week law, which will pave the way for the 6-week ban to be enforced. (A reminder that the Justices on Florida’s Supreme Court have all sorts of conflicts.)

South Carolina’s Supreme Court will also be ruling on a newly-passed abortion ban; they’ll hear arguments in the challenge to the law on June 27th. The Court ruled in January that a different 6-week ban was unconstitutional because it violated the right to privacy, but Republicans believe that this new ban will pass legal muster. That may be because the Justice Kaye Hearn—who wrote the lead opinion in the ruling against the previous 6-week ban—has retired. That means that South Carolina’s Supreme Court only has male justices, making it the only state with no women on the bench.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said this week, “I believe the court should give it the okay to proceed,” and that the people of South Carolina support the ban. (Only 37% of voters support the law.)

We also saw news this week on a religious freedom challenge to Indiana’s abortion ban, where a judge ruled that that the case could be classified as a class action lawsuit. The challenge was brought forward by the ACLU of Indiana on behalf of four anonymous women of various faiths and the group Hoosier Jews for Choice.

In Kansas, abortion providers are suing the state over a requirement that patients wait 24 hours after first seeing a doctor before being able to end their pregnancy, and a new law mandating that doctors lie to patients about abortion pill ‘reversal’.

Finally, in lawsuits to watch out for: We’re seeing more and more cases being brought against buffer zone laws. This week alone, we saw two new lawsuits: One in Colorado, where a so-called “sidewalk counselor” claims that the state’s buffer zone law violates her free speech. And another in Florida, where an anti-abortion group claims that newly-adopted buffer zone in Clearwater, you guessed it, violates their First Amendment rights.

More legal news:

• New York Attorney General Letitia James is pursuing a case against an anti-abortion group that trespasses abortion clinics to try to ‘rescue’ patients;

• Lawyers for the abortion providers suing the FDA over the agency’s unnecessary mifepristone restrictions went in front of a federal judge this week;

• And the $1.8 billion case being brought against Planned Parenthood by an anti-abortion activist continues to move along—find out all about it at Vox.

If you missed my column this week about what kinds of questions we should be asking Republican candidates about abortion—please check it out here. This one got shared and read quite a bit!

What to Ask Republicans About Abortion