I cover abortion.
If there’s one thing that captures how the abortion debate has changed in the last two years, it’s ballot initiatives. In the five decades that Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, almost every abortion question on state ballots was put there by anti-abortion groups. Now the reverse is true. In the last two years, abortion rights activists won seven out of seven ballot initiatives. So this fall, they’re swinging big, asking voters in 10 states to establish a constitutional right to abortion.
A few of these new measures — in Florida, Missouri and South Dakota — would do something no ballot question has done so far: restore access to abortion where it had been almost entirely banned. Previous ballot initiatives have merely protected access in states where it already existed.
And Democrats have another motivation for the initiatives: to drive turnout for Kamala Harris and the party’s congressional candidates, especially in battleground states like Arizona and Nevada.
Several measures will be tricky to pass. The one in Florida, for instance, requires a 60 percent majority. (The highest margin the abortion rights side has won in a red state is just below that.) In today’s newsletter, I’ll guide you through the ballot questions that would let voters decide abortion policy in their states.
Red-state abortions
Most of the ballot measures would amend a state constitution to re-establish the right the Supreme Court established in Roe v. Wade: access to abortion until viability, when the fetus can survive outside the uterus. That’s around 24 weeks of pregnancy. After that, the state could limit or ban abortion, except if a medical provider says it was necessary to protect the mother.