Bringing Roe v. Wade to the Vote: Supporting Protected Prohibition of Abortion at 15 Weeks

Democrats in Virginia maintained their control of the state Senate and successfully consolidated their hold on the state legislature, as they flipped the House of Representatives.

The entire 140-seat legislature was up for grabs. The elections received significant national attention, with prominent Democrats like President Biden and former President Barack Obama boosting their party with emails and robocalls.

In a handful of states with off-year elections, abortion access appeared to be a winning issue for the second general election in a row, even more than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Republicans, led by Youngkin, have been trying to recast their messaging on abortion, pushing a position they framed as a middle ground on the issue: a ban on the procedure at 15 weeks, with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.

Don Scott, the minority leader of House Democrats, told NPR Democratic candidates had “the message, the candidates, and the momentum to put a stop to the extreme Republicans’ agenda.”

Scott is the front runner to be the speaker of the House. If elected, he will be the first black speaker in the Virginia House.

In what became one of the most closely watched campaigns of the year, Ohio voters approved a ballot initiative putting protections for reproductive health decisions in the state constitution, including abortion at least until fetal viability.

It was Kelly Hall from the Fairness Project that said the amendment represents voters in red states, who have passed abortion protections.

Ohio is the first state that I really think we can put in a column that says “We can go on offense and we can win”, according to Hall. “And that is an inspiring example that shines a light on the path for other red states.”

The vote in Ohio followed a special election in August, when Republican lawmakers put a question on the ballot – also called Issue 1 – that would have made it more difficult to amend the state constitution. The number of voters who rejected that proposal was larger than expected.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, won re-election after facing a challenge from the state’s Republican attorney general, Daniel Cameron, who opposes abortion rights and has defended Kentucky’s strict abortion laws in court.

A young woman talks about her experience of being raped by a family member at age 12 in an emotional ad released by Beshear. She pointed out that Kentucky’s abortion law contains no rape or incest exceptions, saying, “Anyone who believes there should be no exceptions for rape and incest could never understand what it’s like to stand in my shoes.”

Kentucky voters rejected a ballot initiative last year that was seen to be unfriendly to abortion rights, in another sign the state’s abortion laws are out of step with public opinion.

In Mississippi, the incumbent Republican governor won a second term. His Democratic challenger was a relative of Elvis Presley who also opposed abortion rights.

In light of the fight over abortion policy in state legislature and courts, abortion rights advocates are paying more attention to state Supreme Court races.

In Pennsylvania, Democrat Dan McCaffery won an open seat on the state Supreme Court after the American Civil Liberties Union invested in online digital ads supporting McCaffery. While the state has a Democratic governor, abortion rights groups want to make it easier for women to seek reproductive healthcare.

“When you have over half of Michigan voters voting for something like Prop3 we need to change the culture,” says the Right to Life of Michigan legislative director, who led the campaign against the Reproductive Health Act. To examine: what is abortion? And how do we prevent abortion?”

Keeping the Medicaid ban in place and the 24-hour delay in place makes people who have the least ability to pay out of pocket for their healthcare disproportionately affected by these changes,” said Dr. Halley Crissman.

The dust from the late-night voting marathon settled in the Michigan House last week, but neither measure passed. The Medicaid ban and the 24-hour waiting period still stand.

The Vote Against Prop 3: Abortion and Taxed Funding in Michigan’s Unified Pro-abortion Movement

“Saying it’s a mix of emotions is really under selling it,” said Laurie Pohutsky, one of the key sponsors of the legislation.

“I don’t think we should sell ourselves short,” says Pohutsky. “This is a big deal.” It’s going to be really, really huge if there’s a repeal of those policies. All of that is meaningless for a person who can’t get an abortion because of a 24 hour delay.

For weeks, Whitsett has been the target of a public pressure campaign from progressive groups like Planned Parenthood of Michigan and the ACLU of Michigan, which warned this week that Whitsett’s “actions will perpetuate the harm being done to her constituents and communities across the state and are a direct affront to the change voters demanded when they passed Proposal 3, including by a margin of 71.2 to 28.8 in Wayne County which encompasses Whitsett’s district.”

She says people who support abortion don’t want to pay for another person’s abortion with their tax dollars. The same as informed consent includes the 24-hour waiting period. It had huge support from voters, including voters who support abortion and supported Prop 3.”

The Hyde Amendment, a federal law that passed in 1976, prohibits federal dollars from being used for abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or when a mother’s life is threatened. Seventeen states, though, allow their Medicaid programs to cover abortions using state funds.

Then, in October, Democrats in the Senate dropped Medicaid coverage for abortions from their version of the legislation. That was after an unknown number of Democrats had also been privately voicing their own concerns about Medicaid funding for abortion, Pohutsky said.

The House members had problems with Medicaid funding. I understand that it is disappointing. There’s no denying that. But I don’t think it’s fair to characterize this as one member who had an issue.”

She said there was a lot of outreach to educate her fellow legislators about the proposed changes. We were not able to get everyone on board.

One strategy seems to have been partially successful: Separating abortion rights from commonsense abortion restrictions.

Her organization worked with the Michigan Coalition to Protect a Woman’s Right to Know, a group of more than 10 statewide organizations that oppose abortion rights..

They publicized polling results they say showed that even voters who supported Proposal 3, also supported some abortion restrictions. According to abortion advocates the language used in that polling distorted what the reproductive health act would do.

The Democrats were cautiously optimistic that they had found a compromise: let go of Medicaid funding for abortion, but pass the rest of the legislation.

But some abortion providers, like Dr. Halley Crissman, said in effect the legislature had created two different tiers of abortion access: one for patients with private insurance, and another for those on Medicaid.

House Speaker Pro Tempore Laurie Pohutsky said she hopes abortion advocates outside the legislature will take up the fight next, by challenging the remaining abortion restrictions in court.

According to Ashlea Phenicie, it might be something that is looked at by the Planned Parenthood of Michigan. These restrictions are unconstitutional and are being explored to remove those barriers to care.

The First Transgender State Senator in Virginia: Two Years After Glenn Youngkin Voted for Governor and Sen. Danica Roem

Two years ago, Glenn Youngkin’s victorious Republican campaign for governor in Virginia had some Democrats worried that their lock on the suburban sprawl outside the nation’s capital wasn’t as tight as they had thought. Those same suburbs on Tuesday made Danica Roem, a Democrat, the first transgender state senator in the South, while helping Democrats seize a majority in the Virginia General Assembly and hold control of the State Senate.

In retrospect, Mr. Youngkin’s victory may have been a hangover from the coronavirus pandemic, when suburban parents worried about school closures and responded to his singular focus on education, said Heather Williams, interim president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which works to elect Democrats to state legislatures.

This time, she said, some of the same parents recoiled from Republican efforts to ban books with L.G.B.T.Q. themes from libraries and more generally inject socially conservative views into the school system.