{"id":1190402,"date":"2023-08-24T17:10:16","date_gmt":"2023-08-24T17:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=442366"},"modified":"2023-08-24T17:10:16","modified_gmt":"2023-08-24T17:10:16","slug":"abortion-bans-or-democracy-you-cant-have-both","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/08\/24\/abortion-bans-or-democracy-you-cant-have-both\/","title":{"rendered":"Abortion Bans or Democracy \u2014 You Can\u2019t Have Both"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"FILE<\/p>\n

People celebrate the defeat of Issue 1 during a watch party in Columbus, Ohio, on Aug. 8, 2023.<\/p>\n

\nPhoto: Jay LaPrete\/AP<\/p>\n

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The defeat of<\/u> Ohio Issue 1 on August 8 demonstrated the strength of the pro-abortion rights vote. Activists secured an initiative to be placed on the November ballot constitutionally enshrining the right to abortion until fetal viability. To head off what promises to be a slam dunk for the pros, Ohio\u2019s anti-abortion Republican legislature proposed its own amendment, to raise the bar to amend the state constitution. That was Issue 1, the sole question on the ballot of the special August election.<\/p>\n

Issue 1 was a transparent ruse \u2014 polls showed 58 percent support<\/a> for the abortion rights measure; the lawmakers specified a 60 percent majority to pass an amendment instead of the current simple majority \u2014 and voters soundly rejected it.<\/p>\n

Now Ohio is set to follow the six states that have conferred the highest level of state protection on reproductive freedom through popular referendum. Campaigners for a similar 2024 ballot measure in Arizona<\/a> are psyched by Ohio\u2019s victory, and Nebraska<\/a> is gearing up for one as well. Virginia Democrats were moved to elevate reproductive liberty to the top of their platform, in hopes of winning back the state House of Representatives and firewalling abortion from Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin\u2019s attempts to impose the most extreme prohibitions.<\/p>\n

In Ohio, democracy prevailed \u2014 and the spirit is spreading.<\/p>\n

Still, you could see it the opposite way. Ohio\u2019s GOP contrived to upend a process of governance that\u2019s been uncontroversial since 1912. The party introduced a bill<\/a> to allow for an August election on a constitutional amendment \u2014 formerly one could be held only in the case of a \u201cfiscal emergency\u201d \u2014 and when the bill stalled in committee, they held the election anyway. The party of skinflints magnanimously allocated<\/a> $20 million in taxpayer funds to run the referendum, which set in motion the spending<\/a> of another $26.6 million in advertising by organizations for and against the initiative. All in all, that\u2019s a slew of monkey wrenches in the gears of democracy, with one purpose: to force women to have children they don\u2019t want.<\/p>\n

You can have abortion bans, or you can have democracy. You can\u2019t have both.<\/p>\n

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Criminalizing abortion is undemocratic in the most basic sense: Increasing majorities of Americans are against it. In fact, a new poll<\/a> shows that given the chance, two in three would vote to protect the right to abortion in their state constitutions. That includes nearly half of Republicans.<\/p>\n

Abortion bans, moreover, could not have been achieved without a long prehistory of dubiously legal, anti-democratic shenanigans like those the legislature pulled in Ohio. The conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade would be a mere, potentially negotiable majority had Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell not refused to hold confirmation hearings for President Barack Obama\u2019s nominee, the moderate Merrick Garland, to fill the seat left vacant by Antonin Scalia\u2019s death in 2016.<\/p>\n

Republicans would not hold seemingly permanent control of Ohio\u2019s statehouse if the party had not radically gerrymandered<\/a> election districts and ignored seven court rulings rejecting the maps it drew. Anti-abortion initiatives on the 2022 ballots in Kansas<\/a> and Kentucky<\/a> also emerged from legislatures gerrymandered to insulate members from the will of the people.<\/p>\n

Ballot initiatives aren\u2019t perfect: The biggest spenders tend to win<\/a>. Still, when representative government is disabled by election rigging and voter suppression, direct democracy may be the citizens\u2019 last resort. Watching ballot initiatives land repeated blows against minority rule, Republicans in states including Florida, Missouri, North Dakota, Utah, and Michigan are doing their damnedest to waylay referenda on the way to the polling booth.<\/p>\n

In Michigan<\/a>, Republicans on the Board of State Canvassers voted to keep two legitimately petitioned referenda off the 2022 ballot. One measure, unironically, instituted pro-voting reforms; the other constitutionally enshrined abortion rights. Both were blocked on technicalities \u2014 the latter because of spacing errors in the document. After the state Supreme Court restored the initiatives, voters approved both. Similarly, the anti-abortion measures in Kansas<\/a> and Kentucky<\/a> were rejected at the ballot box. In 2024, Arizona and Florida<\/a> Republicans will attempt to limit the ability of voters to direct ballot or amend the constitution\u2014 but they\u2019ll have to do it through popular referenda.<\/p>\n

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Enforcement of abortion bans requires the violation of basic constitutional and human rights. Using legislation crafted by the National Right to Life Committee, Texas<\/a> and South Carolina<\/a> have passed laws that stomp on free speech by shutting down websites that offer information on abortion. If the laws stand in the courts, other states are likely to follow.<\/p>\n

In Idaho this month, six public university professors and two unions brought a federal lawsuit<\/a> challenging the state\u2019s 2021 No Public Funds for Abortion Act, which criminalizes<\/a> the use of public funds not just to perform abortions but also to \u201cpromote [or] provide counseling in favor of abortion.\u201d Educators have bowdlerized their syllabi, scrubbed their resumes, and pulled art from an exhibition in fear of overstepping the vague bounds of the law and losing their jobs or facing felony convictions that carry penalties of heavy fines and imprisonment. \u201cThis law censors teaching, discussion, and scholarship about abortion at Idaho\u2019s public universities, effectively stripping professors of their First Amendment right to academic speech,\u201d said the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the professors.<\/p>\n

Not content with prosecuting pill distributors as drug traffickers<\/a> or prohibiting the \u201ctrafficking\u201d<\/a> of fetal tissue, the antis have minted a new species of criminal trafficking. A statute<\/a> signed this spring by Idaho Gov. Brad Little prohibits \u201cabortion trafficking\u201d; it defines as a trafficker anyone who \u201cprocures an abortion\u201d or \u201cobtains an abortion-inducing drug for [a] pregnant minor to use for an abortion by recruiting, harboring, or transporting the pregnant minor\u201d \u2014 language that suggests child sex slavery. Although \u201ctransporting\u201d refers only to the in-state portion of the trip, the law contravenes both the constitutional right to travel and, arguably, the human right to asylum from persecution.<\/p>\n

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