For decades, overturning Roe v. Wade was the holy grail of the right-to-life movement.
After grotesque Senate machinations created a pro-life majority on the Supreme Court, they got a decision leaving abortion rights up to the states.
What happened next was predictable, given that two-thirds of Americans support legal abortion. Abortion rights initiatives have passed in every state where they’ve been on the ballot, including red states.
Consequently, Republicans are doing everything they can to keep abortion rights away from ballot boxes. In Arkansas, initiative organizers submitted the required signatures, but the Republican secretary of state alleged they failed to satisfy a paperwork requirement (see story here).
Montana’s Republican secretary of state says “inactive voters” can’t sign initiative petitions. A lawsuit has been filed (see story here).
These are stopgap measures. They may work for one election. But public support is there for abortion rights and initiative organizers will return. Republicans will continue to dream up creative ways to block these initiatives, but those efforts are only fingers in the dike. Eventually they’ll run out of fingers.
All states, or nearly all, ultimately will have voter-passed abortion rights, because that’s what most Americans want.
