The Quickie: Anti-Abortion Groups Are Trying To Undermine Winning Ballot Measures

Welcome to “The Quickie” — Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s daily tipsheet on the top health care & reproductive rights stories of the day. You can read “The Quickie'' online here.

In today’s Quickie: Anti-abortion groups are trying to undermine winning ballot measures and providers in Iowa push back on the state’s abortion ban rules.

ANTI-ABORTION GROUPS ARE IN THEIR FEELINGS ABOUT ELECTION LOSSES AND TRYING TO UNDERMINE WINNING BALLOT MEASURES: Opponents of reproductive freedom aren’t taking their repeated losses well. In several states, lawmakers and outside groups are filing useless bills and baseless lawsuits to try to undermine winning ballot measures. A new ICYMI from Planned Parenthood Action Fund details attacks in Ohio, Michigan, and Kansas that demonstrate the increasingly outrageous attempts to override voters’ decisions. It’s worth the read – here’s the tl;dr: 

• Ohio lawmakers are trying to strip the courts of power to rule on abortion cases so they can’t decide whether abortion bans comply with the new Reproductive Rights Amendment. 
• Michigan’s Reproductive Freedom Amendment is being challenged with a ridiculous lawsuit from a coalition of anti-abortion groups. 
• Kansas lawmakers filed 20 anti-abortion measures last session, including abortion bans.

Here’s what Planned Parenthood leaders have to say: 

Lauren Blauvelt, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, told MSNBC, “[I’m] not surprised that our representatives are not listening to their constituents. That’s what got us here in the first place."

“It’s the Twilight Zone,” said Anamarie Rebori Simmons of Planned Parenthood Great Plains. 

The Michigan lawsuit is a “brazen political attempt to overturn the will of the people and impose dangerous anti-abortion policies on an electorate that doesn’t want them,” said Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan president and CEO Paula Thornton Greear. 

Voters aren’t going to let these attacks stand. In every state with an abortion ballot measure so far, reproductive freedom has come out on top. And voters are savvy — they’ll see right through the lies pushed by lawmakers and hold them accountable. 

 

IOWA PHYSICIANS PUSH BACK ON RULES FOR SIX-WEEK BAN: This week, the Iowa Board of Medicine issued its proposed rules for the implementation of the state’s six-week ban, which is currently not in effect because of ongoing litigation. If the ban does go into effect, these rules will be the guidelines that providers will need to follow.

In an op-ed in The Des Moines Register, dozens of physicians in Iowa criticized the proposed rules, which include putting the onus on providers to navigate tricky legal questions around the rape and incest exception as well as alluding to threats of discipline for providers who don’t comply. The providers also share that these rules prevent them from providing their patients with the best care possible. They write, “Physicians in Iowa seek to promote positive health outcomes and justice, not to withhold care while waiting for our patients to fully miscarry, or for their health to decline enough to qualify for treatment or result in their death. The population of Iowa deserves better than arbitrary rules that do not promote the health and wellbeing of pregnant patients.”

Read the full op-ed here.