Earlier this week, the Secretary of State’s office in Montana certified enough signatures to place an amendment initiative regarding abortion rights on the November ballot, becoming the ninth state in the country to have such a ballot initiative this year.
The Montana measure would “expressly provide a right to make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion” with no restrictions up to fetal viability.
Democrats have leaned heavily into pushing for abortion rights after the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned that standard, leaving it to individual states to decide their own policies on abortion. Several abortion measures have already been successful, and initiatives to restrict abortion further have been soundly defeated.
On Wednesday, a panel of abortion rights supporters and ballot initiative experts convened in downtown Chicago, not far from the Democratic National Convention (DNC), to discuss the current landscape of such measures.
The “Freedom on the Ballot: The 2024 Abortion Ballot Initiative Landscape” panel included Sarah Garza Resnick, president and CEO of Personal PAC, an Illinois-based abortion rights organization; Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund; Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), who also founded Think Big America, a political action committee dedicated to backing ballot measures to expand abortion rights in the wake of Dobbs; Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, a nonprofit group dedicated to advancing economic and social justice through ballot initiatives; and Mini Timmaraju, a campaign organizer and president of Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America).
Garza Resnick, who managed the panel, began the event by pointing out how Illinois has protected abortion rights, becoming a refuge for people seeking abortion care, following the Supreme Court’s action two years ago.
“Last year alone, in 2023, Illinois took in the largest number of medical refugees in this country,” Garza Resnick said. “Over 37,000 human beings were forced to leave their home state and travel here for compassionate abortion care.”
Panelists were optimistic about ballot initiatives being successful this year, and celebrated the fact that abortion was being discussed more openly, particularly at the DNC itself.
“Isn’t it amazing to be at a convention, and to hear our party talk about abortion as exactly what it is: health care,” Garza Resnick said.
Timmaraju agreed, noting that this “is the first presidential election we’ve had since Dobbs,” the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Despite the positive outcomes that have been seen, particularly in past abortion rights initiatives, there was still much work to be done — and people across the country are still suffering from state bans on abortion, the panelists recognized.
“The longer these bans go on, the more horror stories we hear,” Timmaraju said.
“Abortion bans make pregnancy more dangerous,” added McGill Johnson.
“My whole life, this has been just a given, it’s a right that I think all of us have counted on. I have never imagined that rights in the United States would be diminished, not expanded,” Pritzker said, adding that this election is “the first time that people get to express themselves in a presidential election about the diminishment of those rights.”
When the panelists were asked why ballot measures have been so successful, Hall explained that it was a very direct way for people to make their voices heard.
“There’s something so participatory about ballot measures that it’s — you have to start it as a collaboration and you have to keep doing it every step of the way,” Hall said.
There are additional benefits to ballot measures, too, including building a coalition to support more work for abortion rights, beyond just Democratic-leaning voters.
“What the ballot measure allows us to do is build a coalition that’s broader than just the Democratic partisan coalition and educate voters who may not see themselves as partisan about the root cause of the issue, and that then allows the campaigns to go back and talk more effectively about abortion access,” Hall said, adding:
The panelists agreed, too, that abortion rights efforts at the federal level — including passing legislation protecting those rights — was needed. But that strategy, they admitted, is a longer road than ballot initiatives, and in the meantime, it was essential to focus on both strategies.
“Federal strategy is critical. We can do both things, but we have to put federal strategy in a long arc of what it will take to get us back into the Constitution,” McGill Johnson said. That would include ending or amending the filibuster, she added.
The panelists also warned that abortion rights opponents would continue to try to block efforts to place initiatives on more statewide ballots.
“They have figured out that when we put abortion on the ballot, it will win,” Hall said. “So, their only playbook is to try to keep it off the ballot.”
Hall noted how GOP politicians in Ohio tried to change the threshold needed to win a ballot initiative, and how Republicans in South Dakota are currently trying to change their process, too, to require two consecutive votes of an initiative before their constitution can be changed.
“They’re finding new shapeshifting ways to try to undermine the will of voters,” Hall added, saying it was “revealing” of how Republicans think about their constituents and democracy in general.
Despite these challenges, the panelists were certain that ballot initiatives would be successful in November.
“We have been winning on abortion over, and over, and over again. … Ballot initiative after ballot initiative, we are going to be successful,” said McGill Johnson.
“We are going to win, and not because we are riding a wave of enthusiasm. We’re going to win because advocates in all of these states have been doing blood, sweat and tears work for a very long time and they are exceptionally well positioned to meet this moment, and they will win,” Hall added.
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