ICYMI: How Anti-Abortion, Anti-Democracy State Lawmakers Are Trying to Change the Rules and Rig the Game 

This week, Vanity Fair published a new story detailing some state lawmakers’ ongoing efforts to advance their unpopular anti-abortion agendas by any means necessary, including by undermining democracy. Beyond proposing legislation that explicitly restricts abortion — more than 135 such bills have been filed in 30 states so far in the 2023 session — lawmakers are also targeting the very systems used to protect people’s rights, from the courts to the ballot box.

“We knew all along that they [anti-abortion lawmakers] weren’t going to be satisfied with overturning Roe v. Wade,” Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s Abby Ledoux told Vanity Fair. “They’re not done and they’re coming for more rights."

READ: Vanity Fair: Republicans Are Only Getting Sneakier With Their Antiabortion Proposals

Politicians hostile to reproductive rights know they’re on the wrong side of public opinion — but rather than cutting their losses, they’d rather just change the rules. Anti-abortion politicians know they can’t win without rigging the game. Vanity Fair’s Abigail Tracy goes on to explain some of those efforts, which include:

• Attempts to raise the threshold for future ballot measures by requiring a supermajority of 60% as opposed to a simple majority of voters — lawmakers have proposed this attack on direct democracy so far in Ohio, Arizona, Missouri, and Oklahoma.
• Proposed rules changes in North Carolina’s House of Representatives to make it easier to override a governor’s veto — notably the last line of defense against new abortion bans in a state where anti-reproductive rights politicians hold majorities in both legislative chambers.
• Abandoning the rules entirely in West Virginia to ram through bills without any semblance of democratic process — no debate, no committee hearings, and sometimes even no actual bill text.
• A Utah bill that would rewrite judiciary rules to retroactively change the threshold for obtaining a court-ordered injunction, which has blocked Utah’s trigger ban from taking effect after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The bill, which has notably garnered opposition from the Utah State Bar, is already headed to the Senate floor after passing the House just last week.
• And in Kansas, bills that seek to more easily impeach judges for broad and vaguely defined offenses and to preemptively restrict a governor’s power during state emergencies.

Tracy writes,

These attempts don’t only have really grave implications for abortion rights, but, as Ledoux points out, “a whole range of other rights that we know are also threatened and under attack in many of these states.”

At their core, these attacks are unabashed power grabs, and while they may intend to make it harder — if not downright impossible — to protect reproductive freedom, they represent legitimate threats that extend far beyond abortion.

To learn more about this dangerous legislative trend and abortion rights on the state level, please reach out to [email protected].

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