Severe abortion restrictions rejected by voters
The 2008 election year will be remembered primarily for the fact that America elected its first African-American president, but also that by electing a Democrat into that office, the country as a whole wanted to go in a new direction, hopefully far away from the right-wing ideology that we have had to suffer through for the last eight years.
With all the excitement about the presidential contest, little national attention was focused on the two initiatives on the ballots in South Dakota and Colorado which would have, if they had passed, jeopardized women’s reproductive choices.
No one would categorize either Sorth Dakota or Colorado as being bastions of liberalism, but rather states that represent the values and desires of the average American. It is therefore quite telling that both of these recent ballot initiatives fell in defeat. This conclusion reflects what every poll taken over the last several years has revealed, and that is that the majority of Americans do not want abortion rights overturned.
This was the second time that South Dakota proposed a law that would ban abortions. This year’s Measure 11 was a reworked version of the infamous 2006 failure, although this bill included exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother as enticements to voters. Even so, this time around voters once again rejected it by double digits, 55 to 45 percent, according to Associated Press reports.
The goal in reintroducing this measure on the South Dakota ballot was done with the hope that it would pass and force a showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court over its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. But by a 10 point margin, voters let it be known that they did not want intrusion into their private health care decisions. Doctor-patient and family-based choices were deemed by voters to take precedence over the personal beliefs of others.
Colorado’s Amendment 48, misleadingly named the “Colorado equal rights amendment,” would not have only outlawed all forms of abortion, but would have granted a fertilized egg the same legal and constitutional rights as an adult. It would have in turn jeopardized most forms of birth control, stem-cell research and in-vitro fertilization procedures. Well-informed voters shot down this ludicrous measure with a resounding 72 to 27 percent margin, the Associated Press reported.
The ramifications of this absurd amendment had it passed are mind-boggling. An embryo’s rights would have outweighed the rights of a pregnant woman. Couples using in-vitro fertilization, who had more eggs fertilized than they eventually had implanted, could potentially be brought up on legal charges in the event that these eggs were ever destroyed.
The “No on 48 Campaign” included a bipartisan organization of many thousands of volunteers and more than 80 state and national organizations. They distributed 300,000 pieces of literature, 10,000 yard signs and organized 130 speaking engagements, while gathering more than 20 newspaper endorsements, according to the Planned Parenthood website. The main motivation of the effort was to stop a narrow-minority with an extreme-political agenda from rewriting the Colorado Constitution by changing the definition of “person.”
Ballot measures like those in South Dakota and Colorado waste millions of dollars of state funds that could be better spent on healthcare, family planning and preventative educational programs.
Each time the electorate rejects these divisive and unconstitutional state measures, anti-choice groups vow to come back with a vengeance, even though it becomes clearer each time that the voters will continue to reject these obvious threats to women’s reproductive health choices and privacy.
President-elect Obama, who is pro-choice and was elected in part because of that fact, has committed to work with those who oppose abortion rights to reduce the rate of unintended pregnancies, while also ensuring that women retain their constitutional right to choose. The voters this cycle have also put into office 17 more pro-choice, congressional representatives, as was reported on the NOW website.
The right-wing has been desperate in their attempts to figure out a way to overturn Roe v. Wade, which after more than 30 years now, is legal precedent. With the election of Barack Obama and congressional representatives who support women’s rights, as well as voters overturning extremist ballot measures, it should be clear that the far right does not speak for the majority in this country.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Carol Jensen is a long-time Barstow resident, graduating from Kennedy High School and Barstow College, where she was an English instructor for many years. Much of her time now is spent writing political and social commentary. She may be contacted at cajensen49@msn.com.
