Last election cycle, abortion rights won in all six states with abortion ballot measures, including in red states like Kentucky and Montana that otherwise elected Republican lawmakers.
Now, this fall and in next year’s election, national liberal groups are planning to invest more heavily in ballot measure campaigns, seeing them as vehicles both to protect access to abortion care and to amplify their broader political message that abortion bans are out of step with voters.
Advocates in at least 10 states are considering ballot measure campaigns over the next two years to codify abortion rights. In some states — including Florida, South Dakota, Ohio, Arizona, and Missouri — the measures could help restore rights that have already been lost. In other states, such as Nevada, Maryland, Colorado, and New York, voters could enshrine existing state protections.
Anti-abortion activists, in turn, have vowed to spend millions more dollars to defeat them.
The results last year were “a wake-up call that taught us we have a ton of work to do,” Kelsey Pritchard, the state public affairs director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told Politico in March. “We’re going to be really engaged on these ballot measures that are often very radical and go far beyond what Roe ever did.”
Some abortion rights activists do hope to codify protections beyond what Roe v. Wade guaranteed — sparking internal debates among reproductive rights advocates about tactical ballot measure language.
Most of these measures would be on the ballot in 2024. The exception is Ohio, where reproductive rights advocates are organizing for a new constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights during the upcoming election this November.
As campaigns to get abortion on the ballot begin, fights are also brewing about ballot measures themselves, which provide voters with opportunities to weigh in directly on state policy changes.
In some states, citizens can collect petition…
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