Abortion Rights Could Be On The Ballot In 11 States In November
Arkansas is the latest state to get enough signatures to let citizens vote on abortion.
Congratulations to Arkansas!
On Friday, a group called Arkansans for Limited Government (we see what they did there) announced that it had obtained enough signatures to get abortion rights on the ballot this coming November. In fact, the group obtained more — they only needed to get 90,704, and they got well over 100,000 signatures.
They also did it in spite of a troll campaign meant to dissuade volunteers from collecting more signatures, with an email saying they’d already met their goal.
The amendment in question would “prevent the state from restricting access to abortion up to 18 weeks after fertilization or in the instance of rape or incest, fatal fetal anomaly, or when abortion is needed to protect the pregnant woman’s life or physical health.”
Is 18 weeks great? No, it is not. Especially in the state with the worst maternal health situation in the country. But it’s certainly better than the zero weeks at which it is currently legal to get an abortion in Arkansas if you are not literally dying.
Just 38 percent of Arkansans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, one of the lowest rates in the country — far lower than any of the states where these ballot measures have passed. As shocked as we were when Kansans voted to protect abortion rights, polls show 49 percent of them believe it should be legal.
Still, it seems unlikely that the anti-abortion Right would resort to troll tactics to keep the measure off the ballot if they were not at least a little worried. If the measure were to pass, it would be an incredible victory for those of us on the right side of history.
Arkansans for Limited Government announced their success just days after groups in Nebraska and Arizona announced that they, too, had collected enough signatures to get on the ballot. Montana and Missouri have also collected enough.
Abortion rights groups in Florida, Colorado, Nevada, New York, Maryland and South Dakota have already won final approval for their ballot measures, meaning that abortion rights could be on the ballot in 11 states in November, which will surely come as a disappointment to those who insisted for years that they simply wanted to give decisions about abortion legality “back to the states.” (Just not like this!)
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OhpleaseOhpleaseOhpleaseOhplease...
Kim Cavill
@sexposparenting
I'll never forget "good" Christians shouting, "You're a WHORE," in my face while I walked into Planned Parenthood in 2000, needing emergency contraception and STI testing after I was raped at a fraternity party.