Arizona voters will decide in November whether to establish a right to abortion in the state constitution, a measure that could strongly influence turnout in a battleground state that is critical to the presidential election as well as control of the Senate.
The Secretary of State’s office said it had certified 577,971 signatures that abortion rights groups had collected over the last months, 50 percent more than were required to put the constitutional amendment on the ballot in November and the highest number of certified signatures for any ballot measure in state history.
In the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had established a right to abortion in the United States Constitution, abortion rights groups have prevailed in all seven states where the question of abortion has been put directly before voters. Anti-abortion groups, which had sponsored almost all abortion-related ballot measures before Roe was overturned, have been pushed onto defense, running “decline to sign” campaigns and filing lawsuits trying to prevent signatures from being certified.
Similar measures on abortion rights are already on the November ballot in six other states, but only two are battleground states — Arizona and Nevada. (The others are Florida, South Dakota, Colorado, New York and Maryland.) And Democrats are hoping that support for abortion rights will drive higher turnout in their favor.
Democrats have leveraged unhappiness over Roe’s demise into gains in elections up and down the ballot over the last two years. More young women in particular have shifted toward the party, a demographic that Democrats hope will prove critical in November, and the party’s nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, has campaigned energetically on her support for abortion rights.
Arizona is critical in the fight over control of the U.S. Senate. Ruben Gallego, a Democratic representative, is facing off against Kari Lake, the Republican nominee, for an open seat.
“This is a huge win for Arizona voters who will now get to vote yes on restoring and protecting the right to access abortion care, free from political interference, once and for all,” Cheryl Bruce, the campaign manager for Arizona for Abortion Access, the coalition behind the abortion rights measure, said in a statement.
The amendment is similar to those that voters have approved in other states, including Michigan, another battleground state, and Ohio, which has a more conservative electorate. It would establish a “fundamental right” to abortion, prohibiting the state from banning or limiting the procedure before viability — or when the fetus has “significant likelihood of survival outside the fetus,” generally around 24 weeks of pregnancy — unless those limits are “solely” to protect the life of the patient and do not infringe on her “autonomous decision making.” The state could regulate abortion after viability, except if in the “good-faith judgment of a treating health care professional” an abortion is necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant woman.
As in other states, anti-abortion groups pushed hard to try to keep the measure from appearing on the ballot, with campaigns trying to discourage voters from signing petitions in favor of the ballot question, and a lawsuit challenging signatures. The groups withdrew that challenge but are appealing in another one over the 200-word summary of the question that will appear on the ballot.
A group opposing the measure, calling itself It Goes Too Far, argues that the law in Arizona “is settled” — it allows abortion up until 15 weeks and for medical emergencies after that — and that the amendment would block the state from enforcing “even safety standards.”
But it will be difficult for opponents to remove the measure, titled Proposition 139, now that signatures have been certified. Though in South Dakota, an anti-abortion group has sued to try to remove the question from the ballot.
And Republicans, too, are betting that they can use ballot questions to drive turnout in their favor in Arizona. The Republican-led legislature approved a measure that will ask voters to make it a state crime to unlawfully cross the border from Mexico, placing another hot-button issue directly before voters.
In a CBS News poll in May, 65 percent of likely Arizona voters said they would support a ballot measure establishing a constitutional right to abortion, while 21 percent said they would not and 14 percent said they were unsure.
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