The anti-abortion movement is making great efforts to block citizen initiatives on reproductive rights

CHICAGO– Reeling from a series of defeats, anti-abortion groups and their Republican allies in state governments are using a range of strategies to counter the proposals. electoral initiatives intended to protect reproductive rights or prevent voters from having a say in the fall elections.

The tactics include attempts to remove signatures from initiative petitions, legislative pushes for competing ballot measures that could confuse voters, and months-long delays caused by lawsuits over ballot initiative language. Abortion rights advocates say many of the strategies ramp up tested last year in Ohio, where voters finally approved a constitutional amendment affirming reproductive rights.

The strategies are being used in one form or another in at least seven states where initiatives aimed at codifying abortion and reproductive rights are proposed for a vote in November. The fights over planned statewide ballot initiatives are the latest sign of the deep divisions created by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision two years ago to end a constitutional right to abortion.

Last week, the court issued a ruling in another major abortion case, unanimously defend access to a medicine used in most abortions in the US, although fights over mifepristone remain active in many states.

The stakes for proposed election initiatives are high for both sides.

Where Republicans control the legislature and enact strict limits on abortion, a state-level citizen initiative is often the only path to protecting access to abortion and other reproductive rights. Voters either enshrined the right to abortion or refused attempts to restrict it in all seven states where the issue has been on the ballot since 2022.

In South Dakota, lawmakers passed a bill allowing residents withdraw your subscriptions in citizen-led petitions. This launched a comprehensive effort by anti-abortion groups to invalidate an abortion rights proposal election measure encouraging endorsers to withdraw signatures.

In May, South Dakota’s secretary of state classified as “fraud” hundreds of phone calls from an anti-abortion group that the office accused of “impersonating” government officials.

“It appears that the appeals attempt to pressure voters into asking for their name to be removed from petitions for abortion rights,” the office said in a statement.

Adam Weiland, co-founder of Dakotans for Health, the organization behind the proposed measure, said it is part of “an orchestrated and organized effort across states.”

“People want to vote on this issue and they don’t want that to happen,” he said of anti-abortion groups. “They are using everything they can to prevent a vote on this issue.”

An Arkansas “Refuse to Sign” campaign ramped up this month after a conservative advocacy group published the names of canvassers paid for the right to abortion ballot measure effort. Arkansans for Limited Government, the group behind the election effort, denounced the move as an intimidation tactic.

In Missouri, Republicans and anti-abortion groups opposed efforts to restore the right to abortion through a constitutional amendment at each stage of the process.

Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey with stone walls campaigned for abortion rights for months last year. Then the Secretary of State, Republican Jay Ashcroft, I tried to describe the proposal to voters as allowing “unregulated, dangerous abortions up to live births.” A state court of appeals last year governed that Ashcroft’s text was politically partisan and discarded it.

But Ashcroft’s actions and the legal battle cost the abortion rights campaign several months, preventing his supporters from collecting thousands of voter signatures needed to put the amendment on the ballot.

Once the legal battles were resolved, abortion opponents launched a “refuse to sign” campaign designed to thwart the signature-gathering efforts of abortion rights campaigns. At one point, voters were sent texts falsely accusing petitioners of trying to steal people’s personal data.

Republican lawmakers sought to advance another ballot measure to increase the limit for amending the Missouri Constitution, in part in hopes of making the proposed abortion rights more difficult to enact.

Both anti-abortion efforts failed and the campaign for abortion rights in May delivered more than double the required number of voter signatures. Now it’s up to Ashcroft’s office to verify the signatures and qualify them for voting.

Meanwhile, opposition groups in Arizona, Colorado, Florida It is Nebraska attempted to create their own ballot amendments to codify existing abortion restrictions, although these efforts failed to gather sufficient signatures in Florida and Colorado.

Jessie Hill, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland who served as a consultant for the Issue 1 campaign that codified abortion rights in Ohio, said she had warned about the possibility of competing ballot measures that could confuse voters.

While attempts to keep abortion off the ballot follow a similar model to what she saw in Ohio last year, Hill said she is closely watching new efforts across the country.

“The anti-abortion side is still trying to figure out what the formula is to defeat these ballot measures,” Hill said.

A strategy document leaked last month shows Arizona Republicans considering several competing measures to enshrine abortion restrictions in the state constitution. Possible petition names include “Protecting Pregnant Women and Safe Abortions Act,” “Arizona Abortion and Reproductive Care Act,” or “Arizona Abortion Protection Act.”

The document explicitly details how alternative measures could undermine a proposal from reproductive rights groups that seek to codify abortion rights. through viabilityusually around 23 to 24 weeks of pregnancy.

“This leaked document showed a plan to confuse voters through one or several competing ballot measures with similar titles,” said Cheryl Bruce, Arizona campaign manager for Abortion Access.

In Nebraska, anti-abortion groups are opposing a ballot initiative designed to protect reproductive rights with two of their own.

Allie Berry, campaign manager for the Nebraska Protect Our Rights campaign, which aims to protect reproductive rights, said the competing measures are designed to mislead and confuse voters. She said the campaign is working to educate voters about the differences between each of the initiatives.

“If you have to resort to deception and confusion, it shows that they realize that the majority of Nebraskans want to protect the right to abortion,” she said.

A counter initiative launched by anti-abortion activists in May seeks to ban abortion at all stages of pregnancy. Called “Now Choose Life”, the petition would grant embryos “personality”.

Another, released in March, wouldn’t go as far, but instead seeks to codify the state’s current 12-week abortion ban into the state constitution, while giving lawmakers the ability to pass new restrictions in the future.

The petition, called Protect Women and Children, was endorsed by the national anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and others in the state.

Sandy Danek, executive director of Nebraska Right to Life, called the petition a “reasonable alternative measure.” She said that “as time goes on and we continue to educate,” the organization will aim to further restrict abortion.

“I see this as an incremental process that we’ve been working on for 50 years,” she said.

___

Associated Press writer Summer Ballentine in Jefferson City, Missouri, contributed to this report.

___

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to improve its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. AP is solely responsible for all content.