Donald Trump said so many things that were flat-out false during last week’s debate that it feels futile to focus on just one lie — or even on one topic.
Take abortion, the issue that he personally pushed onto the front burner by appointing three U.S. Supreme Court justices bent on overturning Roe v. Wade, and then congratulating himself when the court did so.
When Trump wasn’t claiming Tuesday night that Kamala Harris, Tim Walz and other abortion-rights advocates are OK with the “execution” of live-born babies — prompting moderator Linsey Davis to remind viewers that “there is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born” — he was insisting, just as nonsensically, that ending constitutional protection is what “everybody wanted.”
Columnist Stephanie Grace
“Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote. And that’s what happened,” he said.
Except that’s not at all what’s happened in many states, including Louisiana. To put it simply, people here can’t vote, because there’s no way for them to get a question on the ballot.
Louisiana has no provision for citizens to gather signatures and put an abortion question — or any question — on a statewide ballot. The only way to get a constitutional amendment before voters here is to convince a supermajority of both houses of the Legislature to put it there.
And given that these are the same people who adopted one of the most stringent abortion bans in the country — one that has no exceptions for rape and incest victims or to protect the pregnant woman’s health, and that carries a threat of imprisonment for providers who cross the line — there’s little chance they’re about to give their constituents an opportunity to overrule them.
Maybe because they know, on some level, that they’ve gone too far, even for one of the most anti-abortion states in the country.
Perhaps they’ve read the polling. A survey for this newspaper taken earlier this year found that 54% of respondents back legalized abortion up to 15 weeks, while 41% oppose.
Surely they’ve followed results in other conservative states where there have been votes; in every case, when asked, voters have supported more abortion rights, not fewer.
Chances are high that we’ll see the same outcome when voters in still more states weigh in on the same day the country chooses the next president — and that the presence of these ballot questions will energize voters who, despite his claim, are not at all happy with Trump’s role in all of this.
That’s surely why, in a number of these states, abortion opponents are putting their thumb on the scale or otherwise making things difficult.
Ohio was first to try to avert a straightforward up-or-down vote, when legislators attempted to raise the bar for approval ahead of an abortion rights referendum; voters saw through the ploy, rejected the change in rules and then voted to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.
Florida voters will weigh in on a six-week ban in November, and state officials, led by Gov. Ron DeSantis, are deploying what opponents call dirty tricks and suppression tactics to defeat the measure.
In the presidential swing state of Arizona, courts sided with Republican lawmakers who wanted to use the term “unborn human being” rather than “fetus” or “embryo” in a state pamphlet about the ballot question, which would add a right to abortion in the constitution.
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In Missouri, which has a harsh ban, the state Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge attempting to stop an abortion-rights initiative from appearing on the ballot. The decision went the other way in Arkansas, which also has a near-total ban, where the high court upheld the secretary of state’s rejection of the petition on a technicality.
Just imagine what would happen if abortion-rights advocates had a way to get such a question on the ballot in Louisiana.
What all these politicians know is what Harris said at the debate: that women experiencing miscarriages who can’t get care because their doctors are afraid of being arrested don’t want this. Nor do children being forced to carry a pregnancy resulting from the rape of a relative or women having to travel far out of state to exercise what had been a constitutional right before Trump got involved.
Even in states like Missouri and Arkansas.
And yes, even here.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe if Louisianans did get to weigh in, as Trump said they should, they’d keep the current law in place.
Hey, Louisiana Legislature. There’s one way to find out.
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Publish date : 2024-09-14 12:00:00
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