Missouri *Shows You* Why You Can't Vote For Republicans And Abortion Rights, Too
Just 'voting for the referendum' doesn't seem to work in red states! Weird!
One of the major points of discussion surrounding the last election was the fact that voters in many states chose to elect Republican politicians while voting for left-wing policies through referendums — abortion rights in particular.
Well, Missouri voters are about to find out just how (not) good of a plan that is, as Republicans in office are already hard at work looking to undermine the abortion rights people voted in favor of in November. They’re already pushing for a ballot measure that would put it into the state constitution that life begins at conception.
It’s what Republicans did in Ohio when voters passed an abortion rights referendum. It’s what Republicans did in Montana. It’s what Kristi Noem did in South Dakota when voters legalized marijuana. I can’t think of a time Republicans haven’t tried it! Here’s a story on a rash of these cases from 2017!
The Missouri measure would amend the constitution to read “that the term ‘person’ under this constitution includes every human being with a unique DNA code regardless of age, including every in utero human child at very stage of biological development from the moment of conception until birth.” I am going to need to point out that while this definition would deem a zygote a person, identical twins, regardless of their age, would essentially be unpersoned.
Now, while this would provide immunity from murder charges in the event of a clone war in the distant future (or if they harvested their clone for organs), it would also mean that those who have or perform abortions would be considered guilty of murder and could be criminally charged with it, same as they would if they killed a fully developed, non-cloned, human being. It would also make Missouri the second state, after Alabama, to recognize “fetal personhood” in its constitution.
It’s a bit of a coward’s anti-abortion amendment, no? Because they aren’t coming right out and saying “This is a law meant to ban abortion,” are they? No, they’re asking to allow an amendment to the state constitution saying that a person becomes a person at conception, so long as they are not a clone.
It doesn’t end there, of course. ProPublica reports that there are myriad other proposed anti-abortion measures out there in the state:
Other proposed amendments include stricter abortion limits, such as restricting access to cases of rape, incest, medical emergencies and fetal anomalies. These measures would impose additional requirements, such as mandating that rape survivors file police reports to obtain an abortion.
GOP lawmakers have also introduced a measure to raise the threshold for amending the state constitution through voter initiatives, which could make it harder to pass similar measures in the future.
These measures, ProPublica notes, are being justified by legislators who believe the vote was close enough to determine that maybe — just maybe — voters didn’t want those rights that much after all.
The author of one of the personhood measures, Rep. Justin Sparks, a Republican from the St. Louis suburbs, said he was emboldened by the narrow margin of the abortion rights vote.
“A clear mandate has not been achieved,” he said. While the amendment had strong support in metro St. Louis and Kansas City and in the county that’s home to the University of Missouri, “the vast majority of the rest of the state voted in a different direction,” he added. “So I think it’s fair to again bring the question up.”
Oh, is it? Because the amendment won 51.6 for to 48.4 against, which is a much larger margin than the popular vote of the general election, in which Trump got only 49.9 of the vote, and I’ll bet you that Justin Sparks thinks that’s a pretty legit mandate.
Unfortunately, for these voters, the dream of mostly left-wing policies and right-wing politicians is just that — a dream.
So as dazzling as they may find it it when their representatives go on social media and act like teenage edgelords playing Fortnite or whatever, as much as they may hate various groups of people and wish to be legally superior to them … if they actually want to live nice lives where they are not forced to give birth against their will and can actually find a labor and delivery ward to give birth in when they do want to do so, then they can’t actually vote for those people.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Shorter Missouri legislature, "When we want your opinion we'll give it to you."
A government "Over the people, buy the people, fuck the people.