BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI — Aliza Solc, the 30-something vice-president of a major communications company, doesn’t normally find public speaking difficult. But she was struggling one recent evening.
“My husband and I were so happy and excited when we learned we were pregnant,” she said. They very much wanted a baby. But when she was 20 weeks along, they got upsetting news. The baby’s brain was protruding outside the skull. The problem couldn’t be fixed by in utero surgery. Odds are the child would be born dead, or have a very brief and severely impaired life.
Painfully, they made the decision to terminate the pregnancy, only to find there was a long waiting list. “It was because there are so many women from other states where abortion has been outlawed who are coming here for help,” she said. Some have come because doctors are even afraid to help women having miscarriages, lest they be charged with a felony for aiding an abortion.
Eventually, after having to endure the emotional pain of feeling the doomed baby kick for days, Solc managed to get into a university hospital, partly because she was well connected.
But in many states, women like her would have to endure a devastating pregnancy, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on June 24.
“That’s why we have to approve this amendment,” she told a rapt, mainly female audience, who gave her a standing ovation. She was referring to what is Proposal 3 on Michigan’s ballot Nov. 8, a proposal that would make abortion a protected right for all.
But Ray Lydens, an automotive service technician at a Walmart in Muskegon, is vehemently opposed to what he calls “killing your baby. It isn’t responsible. It’s a coward’s way out.”
Welcome to the front lines of what is perhaps the most dramatic constitutional amendment struggle in Michigan history, which will appear on the Nov. 8 ballot as Proposal 3, known as the “reproductive freedom amendment for all amendment.”
Essentially, it would make access to abortion, as well as contraception, a state constitutional right.
As of now, it seems likely to pass. Polls in early October showed voters favored it by 62 to 24 percent. The highly regarded Glengariff survey found it winning even with a majority of voters who say they “lean Republican.” Those in favor of the amendment had outspent those opposed, primarily Right to Life and the Roman Catholic Church, by more than 10 to one.
But in recent weeks those opposed have been arguing that the amendment is “too confusing and too extreme.” Some of their claims are clearly false, such as that it would allow young children to have gender reassignment surgery without telling their parents.
However, there are some legitimate questions about the amendment. The Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a strictly non-partisan analytical body, noted that “the proposal’s language is broad and largely undefined, making it vulnerable to a host of legal challenges.” For example, from the amendment:
“… the state may regulate the provision of abortion care after fetal viability, provided that in no circumstance shall the state prohibit an abortion that, in the professional judgment of an attending health care professional, is medically indicated to protect the life or physical and mental health of the pregnant individual.”
Does that mean, essentially, abortion on demand at any time, right up until birth? What precisely is “fetal viability?” Can an attending nurse or medical assistant decree that a late-term abortion should be allowed because the pregnant woman might be depressed otherwise? The answer isn’t clear.
What is clear from many surveys is that most Americans, and most Michiganders, want abortion to be legal during the first trimester of a pregnancy, and the vast majority want it to be legal in the case of rape or incest. But according to a recent Gallup poll, 71 percent think it should be illegal in the third trimester.
So how will voters decide on Proposal 3?
Opponents might be more likely to persuade voters to say no if there were a more moderate alternative, but there isn’t one. When Roe was overturned, it reinstated a 1931 abortion law that totally banned abortion except if a woman is close to death. Otherwise, a doctor helping her could be charged with a felony.
Several Michigan judges have issued rulings temporarily banning that law’s reinstatement, but it could eventually be back in force if Proposal 3 is defeated. That would also create something of a ‘wild west’ law enforcement climate around abortion in the state.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel says she will never prosecute anyone involved in an abortion, no matter what, and Karen McDonald, prosecutor in affluent Oakland County, vows the same. But several prosecutors in more conservative counties elsewhere in the state have indicated they would prosecute.
And while Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is loudly pro-choice, Tudor Dixon, her Republican opponent in this year’s election, even opposes abortions for minors raped by family members.
Renee Chelian, a grandmotherly 71-year-old, had the traumatic experience of having a botched illegal abortion in an industrial garage when she was 15, and surviving a massive infection. She went on to found a small chain of family planning center clinics, and not surprisingly, to campaign for Proposal 3
Ironically, while most Democrats were upset that Roe v Wade was overturned, many Republicans are equally upset that Proposal 3 is on the ballot. There are indications that it will provoke a huge turnout of angry pro-choice voters, most of them women, and that they will vote against GOP candidates as well, weakening what might have been huge midterm gains.
Or as historian Heather Cox Richardson put it, “the dog has caught the car.” The result could be painful indeed.
Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade
