When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in late June and took away a constitutional right to an abortion that had been in place for nearly half a century, the justices in the majority said abortion laws should be left up to the states.
Reproductive rights advocates in Michigan were way ahead. Alarmed that the Supreme Court didn’t block the diabolical Texas law that bans abortions at six weeks of gestation and empowers private citizens to enforce it by suing anyone who helps a woman get an abortion, they had already begun the process of putting a measure on the November ballot that would enshrine in the state constitution a right to abortion. They eventually submitted more than 750,000 signatures (far more than the 425,000 they needed.) When a state elections board refused to certify the measure on a technicality, abortion rights advocates took the issue to the state’s Supreme Court, which overrode the election board’s decision and ordered Proposal 3, as it is known, onto the ballot.
Across the country, voters are weighing in on abortion rights — through the candidates they choose and the proposals they vote for or against. Inflation and the economy loom large this election year, but reproductive rights, which can dictate life-long decisions, transcend those immediate issues. If you cannot control what happens to your body, you have less freedom than you had last year.
