CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Hidden inside the West Virginia Statehouse is a copy of a petition to lawmakers with a simple request: Let voters decide whether to restore legal access to abortion.
The request was ignored by Republican lawmakers who have absolute majority control in the Legislature and banned abortion in the state in 2022, shortly after the US Supreme Court struck down a constitutional right to the procedure.
The petition, with more than 2,500 signatures, is essentially meaningless given the current makeup of the Legislature. But it illustrates the frustratingly limited options facing millions of Americans in trying to restore the right to abortion as the country marks the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling.
West Virginia is among the 25 states what do not allow citizen initiatives or constitutional changes on the ballot at the state level, a route to direct democracy that has allowed voters to bypass their legislatures and preserve abortion and other reproductive rights in several states over the past two years.
Republicans have repeatedly rejected the idea of putting an abortion rights measure before voters, which in West Virginia is a step only lawmakers can take.
“It makes you wonder what they are so afraid of,” said Democratic Del. Kayla Young, one of 16 women in the West Virginia Legislature. “If they feel so strongly that this is what people believe, prove it.”
The court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was praised by abortion opponents as a decision that returned the issue to the states. Former President Donald Trumpwho appointed three of the justices who overturned Roe, has repeatedly stated that “the people” are now who decide access to abortion.
“People are deciding,” he said during a recent interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. “And in many ways, it’s a beautiful thing to watch.”
But this is not true everywhere. In states that allow citizen initiatives and where access to abortion is on the ballot, voters have resoundingly affirmed the right to abortion.
Voters in seven states, including conservatives like Kentucky, Montana and Ohio, have protected abortion rights or defeated attempts to restrict them on state ballots over the past two years. Reproductive rights advocates are trying to put citizen initiatives in the vote in several states this year.
But voters have no direct say in about half the states.
This is particularly true for those living in the South. Republican-controlled legislatures, many of which were heavily manipulated to give the Republican Party disproportionate power, enacted some of the strictest abortion bans since the Supreme Court ruling, at the same time that shun efforts to expand direct democracy.
States began adopting the initiative process during the Progressive Era more than a century ago, giving citizens a way to make or repeal laws through a direct vote of the people. Between 1898 and 1918, almost 20 states approved the citizen initiative. Since then, only five states have done so.
“It was a different time,” said John Matsusaka, a business and law professor at the University of Southern California. “There was a political movement across the country as people tried to do what they considered good government.”
Some lawmakers argue that citizen initiatives bypass important checks and balances offered through the legislative process. In Tennessee, where Republicans gerrymandered legislative districts to give them a supermajority in the House, House Majority Leader William Lamberth likened ballot measures to polls rather than what he described as the legislature’s rigorous review of the complicated policy making.
“We evaluate the accounts every year,” he said.
As in West Virginia, abortion rights advocates or Democratic lawmakers have asked Republican-controlled legislatures in a handful of states to take the abortion issue directly to voters, a tactic that has not been successful anywhere the Republican Party has majority.
“That means you’re going to say, ‘Hey, Legislature, would you like to give up some of your power? Would you like to give up your monopoly on policymaking?’” said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego. “We need a political boost and then make the process cooperate.”
In South Carolina, which prohibits almost all abortions, a Democrat-backed resolution to put a state constitutional amendment on the ballot was never heard this year. Attempts to attach the proposal to other pieces of legislation were quickly rejected by Republicans.
“If you believe you are doing the right thing for all the people of South Carolina – men, women and babies – you should have no problem bringing that out to the people,” said Democratic Senator Margie Bright Matthews, claiming that Republicans fear for this to happen. would lose if the issue went directly to voters.
In Georgia, Democratic Rep. Shea Roberts said she frequently fields questions from her constituents about how they can get involved in a citizen-led ballot measure. Interest exploded after voters in Kansas rejected an anti-abortion measure from the Legislature in 2022 and was revived last fall after Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved an amendment codifying abortion rights into the state constitution.
However, when she introduced legislation to create a citizen initiative process in Georgia, the efforts were ignored within the Republican-controlled legislature.
“Voters constantly ask us why we can’t do this and we constantly explain that it’s not possible under our current constitution,” Roberts said. “If almost half of the states have this process, why shouldn’t Georgians do it?”
The contrast is evident in two presidential swing states. Michigan voters used a citizen initiative to enshrine the right to abortion in its state constitution in 2022. Voters in neighboring Wisconsin do not have that ability.
Instead, Wisconsin Democrats, with a new liberal majority on the State Supreme Court, are working to bring down Legislative maps drawn by Republicans that are among the most manipulated in the country in the hope of eventually flipping the Legislature.
Analiese Eicher, communications director for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, said a citizen-led election process would have been especially valuable to their cause.
“We should have legislators who represent their constituents,” she said. “And if they don’t, there should be another option.”
In West Virginia, Steve Williams acknowledges that the petition he led did not change opinions within the Legislature.
But the Democratic mayor of Huntington, who is an unlikely candidate for governor, said he believes state Republicans underestimated how much voters believe in restoring some kind of access to abortion.
Republican leadership pointed to a 2018 poll in which just under 52% of voters supported a constitutional amendment saying there is no right to access abortion in the state. But Williams said the vote also had to do with state funding of abortion, which someone could oppose without wanting access to be completely eliminated.
The vote was close, voter turnout was low, and it occurred before the Supreme Court ruling that eliminated the national right to abortion. Williams said West Virginia women don’t face the reality of a near-total ban.
“Let’s face it: Life in 2024 is a lot different for women than it was in 2018,” he said.
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Associated Press writer Jeffrey Collins contributed to this report from Columbia, South Carolina. Kruesi reported from Nashville, Tennessee, and Fernando from Chicago.
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