The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-15)

SUNDAY, MAY 15 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE K A

$460,000 has been raised to fight the measure, with $235,000 coming from the national and state chapters of the ACLU. Polling suggests that Kansans are nearly evenly divided over abortion rights, according to a 2018 Public Religion Research In- stitute poll, while in Kentucky 51 percent opposed them. In Ver- mont, meanwhile, 72 percent said they supported abortion rights. Robinson Woodward-Burns, an assistant political science professor at Howard University, pre- dicted that states with laws and constitutional amendments banning or restricting abortion will find it difficult to truly end the practice. He pointed to how states failed to uniformly enforce Prohi- bition. “It’s very, very hard for states to enforce laws when neighboring states refuse,” he said. “What they are really doing is challenging people to go elsewhere. These laws will create a lot of movement across state lines. ... This is what happens when there is a patch- work of laws across the nation.”

Alice Crites and Scott Clement contributed to this report.

made similar unfounded claims about the law being used to allow Vermonters to abort fetuses based on gender or biological traits. Proponents of the ballot measure, meanwhile, said their focus in the lead-up to November will be on educating voters about the law’s intent to protect — not ex- pand — abortion rights. “Our work is going to be to try to make sure that voters have accurate and correct and factual information about what the amendment is and about what it does, because we know that our opponents are already feeding misinformation to the public,” said Leriche, with Vermont Planned Parenthood. With the public vote still six months away, fundraising is still ramping up in Vermont and Ken- tucky, advocates said. But with an August vote loom- ing in Kansas, disclosure state- ments show at least $1.2 million has been raised to fund a campaign to back the measure, with a majority of donations coming from Catholic organizations, including $500,000 from the Arch- diocese of Kansas City. More than

ger.”

The campaigns In Vermont, opponents of the proposed constitutional amendment have been waging a public campaign since it was first intro- duced in 2018. Some have made extreme claims about the measure. One flier distributed across Vermont in March, for instance, alleged the amendment would mean that “Doctors and nurses will be forced to perform abortions ... or be forbidden from practicing medicine in Vermont.” Nothing in the constitutional amendment requires such a man- date, the group behind the flier acknowledged in an interview. But organizers argued the proposed law is murky, and there could be repercussions that would be difficult to correct in the future. “We cannot say this is the obvi- ous blueprint or plan. I will admit we used clunky wording but we believe the intention is there or that this could lead to these unin- tended consequences,” said Strong, of Vermonters For Good Government, whose group has

the power to set abortion policy — without any checks and balances from state courts — would prob- ably end abortion access in the state. “It is effectively a ban,” said Kentucky state Rep. Lisa Willner (D), who opposes the ballot measure. “If you look at the kind of laws that have been proposed and passed in the state of Kentucky with the Republican super major- ities, it’s clear that these laws are going to make it impossible for providers to offer abortion care in the state of Kentucky.” Since 2017, the Kentucky legislature has passed 15 bills that have restricted access to abortion in the state. Among them is a 2019 law, currently being challenged in state court, that would ban abortions after the sixth week of preg- nancy, before most women know they are pregnant. That same year, Kentucky passed a “trigger law,” that calls for banning all abortions should Roe v. Wade be overturned. And last year, the Kentucky legislature passed a bill that had 60 pages of new restrictions and requirements for abortion clinics. The only two clinics in Kentucky immediately shut down after it became law last month but have reopened under a court order that delayed implementation of the law while it is being challenged.

Enshrining protections For the past four years, Melin- da Moulton has repeatedly told the Vermont state legislature about her personal experience with the dangers of restricted reproductive rights. Moulton was 12, she says, when her mother died following a botched hyster- ectomy performed in a makeshift medical facility catering to women like her: unwed and secretly pregnant. “My mother was a product of the pre- Roe era,” said Moulton, 73, who is vice chair of ACLU Ver- mont’s board of directors, in an interview. “A lack of reproductive freedom cost her her life. I have three granddaughters now and my job is to make sure they don’t end up in some backroom, muti- lated.” Motivated by President Donald Trump’s promises to add abortion opponents to the Supreme Court, Moulton joined with state lawmakers to build support first for a law that passed in 2019 explicitly protecting abortion rights. At the same time, they began work on a constitutional amendment to broadly protect “reproductive autonomy.” It took four years to get it on the ballot, as the state’s laws require two consecu- tive legislatures to approve constitutional amendments, and ses- sions run for two years. Vermont state Rep. Ann Pugh, the Democrat who sponsored the bills, said a state law protecting abortion could be too easily swept away if the political climate changed in Vermont. “People smarter than me said the state law will protect us for now, but what if the political winds shift?” Pugh said, adding that in the House Committee on Human Services that she chairs, “There are four or five bills that would limit or take away abortion rights. That right is only as secure as who is in the legislature.” Political experts said that in left-leaning states like Vermont and California, amendments to protect abortion rights are also aimed at reassuring liberals wor- ried about a world in which Roe v. Wade is overturned. “It is more of a signal to pro- gressives and the base of progres- sive voters in states like California that they are safe,” said Jonathan Parent, an associate political science professor at Le Moyne Col- lege who studies state constitutions and reproductive rights. “They are not realistically in dan-

supreme court

JON CHERRY/REUTERS

Antiabortion protesters p ray in April in Louisville, Ky. A constitutional amendment on the ballot this
fall in Kentucky seeks to give the legislature the exclusive power to set abortion policies.

KRISTOPHER RADDER/ASSOCIATED PRESS Abortion rights demonstrators rally early this month in Brattleboro, Vt. A constitutional ballot measure in Vermont would protect the right to abortion, the first of its kind.

and others in the nation.” The constitutional battles are expected to be fierce and polariz- ing. In Vermont, for instance, opponents are invoking eugenics to claim the protections would be so open-ended they would allow abortions aimed at selecting spe- cific biological traits. “This is completely false,” said Lucy Leriche, vice president of Vermont Public Policy at Planned Parenthood. “They are trying to create fear and doubt. It feels desperate to me, and I think in Vermont people will consider the messenger and see through their underlying motives.”

Following Tennessee’s lead Kentucky state Rep. Joseph Fischer (R) was attending the Holy Cross College in Indiana when the Supreme Court issued its decision in Roe v. Wade in

Fischer, who is Catholic,
jumped into classroom argu-
ments about whether the deci-
sion “was rational or not.”
“Those debates convinced me
it was an immoral decision,” he
said of Roe v. Wade in an inter-
view. “I became involved in right-
to-life organizations after I grad-
uated. I dedicated myself to the
issue.”
Until 2014, there was little
movement to address abortion in
state constitutions. However, that
year Tennessee voters passed an
amendment giving the legislature
the exclusive power to set abor-
tion policies — a move prompted
by a state supreme court ruling in
2000 that found the Tennessee
constitution’s privacy provisions
afforded women similar state-lev-
el protections as those in Roe v.
Wade.
Alabama, West Virginia and
Louisiana soon followed suit.
Fischer began proposing simi-
lar amendments in Kentucky,
which also has constitutional pri-
vacy provisions, without success.
But “as we have moved closer and
closer to a repeal of Roe v. Wade , it
has got onto the radar screen,”
Fischer said.
In 2021,, his measure passed
the Kentucky House and Senate,
putting it on the ballot this fall.
The measure does not explicitly
ban abortion, but rather notes
that “to protect human life, noth-
ing in this Constitution shall be
construed to secure or protect a
right to abortion.”
The amendment would effec-
tively block the state court from
making future decisions on the
issue, giving the Kentucky legisla-
ture the ultimate power on abor-
tion rights.
Kansas legislators have passed
a bill that calls for a similar
amendment, which says that
nothing in the state constitution
creates a right to abortion nor
requires state funding for the
procedure. It also clarifies that
the power to set abortion policy
resides with the state legislature.
Steering clear of an outright
ban in state constitutions is both
a campaign and legal strategy.
“This is likely to receive much
broader support than a much
more narrow prohibition,” Fisch-
er said. “And it keeps the debate in
the public forum, and I think that
people will respect that and vote
for that.”
Abortion rights advocates in
Kentucky say this strategy is de-
ceptive, noting that the laws al-
ready on the books show that
giving Kentucky state lawmakers

sides,” said Eric Scheidler, execu-
tive director of the Pro-Life Ac-
tion League. “Court battles over
abortion are going to grow in
state courts, so efforts to shore up
state constitutions is also going to
grow.”
Unlike a Supreme Court ruling
or the dozens of abortion bills
passed in statehouses this year,
the constitutional amendments
will directly test voters’ views on
abortion rights.
That prospect has mobilized
sizable campaigns, as more than
$1 million has been disclosed by
political action committees dedi-
cated to the August ballot meas-
ure in Kansas, with antiabortion
groups outpacing opponents by a
2-to-1 margin. Thousands more
have been reported in Kentucky
and Vermont, which vote in No-
vember. In all three states, anti-
abortion groups, including Cath-
olic and Evangelical Christian or-
ganizations, are lining up against
Planned Parenthood, the Ameri-
can Civil Liberties Unionand oth-
er organizations.
Enshrining abortion restric-

tions or rights within state consti-
tutions makes the measures near-
ly intractable, experts say, unless
Congress passes a national ban or
protection law. Whereas state
laws can be upended after a
change in party control, constitu-
tional amendments generally
take years to get on the ballot.
“The reason you turn to state
constitutions is you want it to be
more durable and harder to
change,” said David A. Bateman ,
an associate professor of govern-
ment at Cornell University who
studies state legislatures.
In Michigan, where signatures
are being gathered in an effort to
get a Vermont-style constitution-
al measure on the state’s Novem-
ber ballot, organizers said the
leaked Supreme Court draft has
galvanized supporters. Organiz-
ers have until July 11 to secure
425,059 valid signatures.
“Overnight, hundreds of new
volunteers have asked to become
part of this campaign,” said Ni-
cole Wells Stallworth, executive
director of Planned Parenthood
Advocates of Michigan. “We’ve
been energized.”
Abortion opponents said they
also believe the Supreme Court
leak will similarly mobilize their
base.
“With the SCOTUS decision
leak there will be a lot more
attention on Vermont and a lot
more eyeballs on Prop 5, which is
taking the most aggressive ap-
proach in the country on abor-
tion,” said Matthew Strong, exec-
utive director of Vermonters For
Good Government, referring to
the state’s proposed amendment,
which his group was created to
fight. “I think this will finally put
this on the radar for Vermonters

ABORTION FROM A

State constitutions

are next frontier

in abortion battle

“The reason you turn to

state constitutions is

you want it to be more

durable and harder to

change.” David A. Bateman, associate professor at Cornell University

The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-15)

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