The wave of state ballot initiatives seeking to impose unrestricted abortion-on-demand on states from coast to coast has encountered a serious problem: Voters are beginning to see them as a cynical ploy to elect Democrats. The news comes from reading between the lines of a story in Politico titled “National Dem strategy worries state abortion-rights leaders.”
“Democrats’ efforts to ride the coattails of abortion ballot measures put passage at risk,” declares the subheadline.
The abortion lobby apparently fears defeat if voters realize their state’s referendum serves as little more than a Democratic voter-drive scheme. “We haven’t won or beat back a single one of these ballot measures without significant [I]ndependent and Republican support,” Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL) told Politico. “We spent a lot of last year talking to candidates directly saying, ‘Don’t put things on the ballot just to enhance voter turnout for Dems.” A leader of the Nebraska abortion-expansion referendum, Taylor Givens-Dunn said, “We want to be clear that this is about people, not politicians.”
Their concerns have spread to the professional political class. An anonymous consultant working with multiple state ballot initiatives told Politico that Democratic candidates “don’t need to talk about the specific ballot initiatives all day long,” because if they do, it will “reduce the chances that they win.”
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Thus far, Democrats have not only ignored this anonymous individual’s advice; they have openly touted the referenda as their party’s political salvation in November. “[A]bortion has become a key issue that could help drive turnout for Democrats to win up and down the ballot,” said a memo dated May 2 from the Democratic Party’s official campaign arm aimed at winning statewide races, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC). “These measures will cement abortion protections into state constitutions and could boost turnout for competitive races at every level of the ballot.” The DLCC’s president, Heather Williams, apparently provided the memo to Axios along with her own quotation.
Democrats have considered multiplying these initiatives even in self-described “abortion sanctuaries,” such as New York. Although the state has effectively no protections for unborn children, and Governor Kathy Hochul (D) gives millions to abortion facilities, “Democrat lawmakers pushed the effort forward amid hopes that it will bolster turnout,” reported The Hill.
The bad news is that support for abortion-on-demand does, indeed, cut across party lines. That includes a dishearteningly large minority of Bible-believing Christians, according to a study of Ohio’s Issue 1 released by the Center for Christian Virtue (CCV). Based on their numbers, “1 in 3 self-identified weekly church-going Catholics and Evangelicals supported the law, which will rob an estimated 30,000 unborn children of their lives every year,” CCV found. In all, “30 percent of Ohioans who believe life begins at conception voted to pass the radical abortion amendment.”
Even with such odds, the abortion industry apparently frets voters will reject ballot initiatives that are seen as a craven Democratic GOTV effort.
It would be a shame if the word got out.
LifeNews Note: Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
