Deirdre Schifeling: Republicans are desperate to keep abortion off the ballot

By Deirdre Schifeling

This November, voters in ten states will have the opportunity to enshrine abortion rights in state constitutions. The anti-abortion politicians and judges in those states, seeing the votes on recent measures across the country protecting reproductive rights, are getting increasingly desperate to make sure abortion is banned regardless of what their constituents actually want. To do this, they’re throwing every scare tactic and half-baked legal theory at the wall to keep abortion off the ballot and deny constituents their right to vote on the issue.

By now, we’re all too familiar with the fringe anti-democratic spirit plaguing today’s politics, whether it’s Trump’s false election claims resulting in the January 6th coup attempt or the dozens of laws passed by states making it harder to vote. What we’re seeing now in the fight for reproductive rights, though, is simply unprecedented in modern times. If you want a preview of how American democracy could be dealt a death blow if we allow these politicians to trample over our voice and laws on one of the defining issues of our time, recent events in these states offer a preview.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, 14 states have fully banned abortion, and 675 state laws to restrict abortion were introduced in the first full year without Roe. Americans across the country have responded in force by using the most powerful tool at their disposal — their vote. Voters have chosen to protect abortion access at the ballot box in every single opportunity they have had over the last two years, including in Kansas, Kentucky, and Ohio.

Momentum has only increased. Elected officials, however, are doing everything in their power to thwart these citizen-led efforts, following a long-established pattern of going to troubling lengths to ban abortion and silence their constituents.

In Florida, nearly a million Florida citizens signed a petition to put an abortion rights measure on the ballot. Even with the high 60% vote threshold for ballot measures to pass in the state, polling suggests that it has a strong chance. Faced with a public on the verge of rejecting the abortion ban that has become the cornerstone of his political career, Governor Ron DeSantis has resorted to acting more like a mobster and dictator than an elected representative. 

We learned recently that DeSantis has been dispatching state police to “investigate” petition signers, confronting them at their homes and asking if they really did sign the petition. Putting aside the fact that Florida’s Secretary of State already validated these signatures, what kind of power trip is DeSantis on where he thinks it is acceptable to intimidate his own constituents for expressing their views?

These secret police tactics come on top of the Governor tapping Project 2025’s Heritage Foundation to create a highly misleading and wildly statement on the financial impact of the measure that is printed on the ballot and directing the state’s official health department to create a taxpayer-funded state website about how pregnant Floridians are actually safer when the government takes away their reproductive rights.

Similarly in Missouri, one judge tried to single-handedly remove the state’s popular reproductive freedom measure from the ballot, completely ignoring the 380,000 voters who signed the petition — over twice what it needed to qualify. The Missouri Secretary of State then unilaterally — and without authority — ordered the ballot measure to be removed from the ballot. 

The Missouri Supreme Court, fortunately, stepped in at the 11th hour to ensure the question would be put to voters in November. But the fact that this legally baseless attempt to silence Missourians nearly worked shows us that these elected officials will not let rules and laws stop them. If anything, they’ll just try harder next time around.

Look at any abortion ballot measure, and you’ll find evidence of politicians working hard to thwart the will of the people. There is a coordinated effort by elected state leaders to actively and maliciously impose their own agenda on their constituents. 

As it becomes increasingly clear that politicians are out of step with the majority of Americans on the issue of reproductive rights, these politicians have a choice to make — either moderate their positions to be representative of their constituents, or abandon democracy and impose their extreme policies through illegitimate force. Based on the past week alone, it’s clear they have chosen door number two. 

Their shocking tactics should remind us that this election is about more than any single issue — it’s about who we are as a country. This November, and for as long as we still have a democracy, let’s show would-be dictators the door and restore the power of every American to shape our future.

Deirdre Schifeling is the ACLU’s Chief Political and Advocacy Officer.