The ballot-measure battle on how to say 'aborting a child’

Abortion is back in the news (as if it ever left). The Supreme Court of Arizona ruled Wednesday that the state’s November ballot measure will include the term “unborn human beings” to describe the person abortion kills. The Wednesday decision overturned a Maricopa County Superior Court decision that had ruled this kind of honesty was somehow biased.

The decision has infuriated pro-abortion activists, who wanted the ballot to call babies “fetuses.” They say that’s impartial, because obscuring reality is a favorite — and essential — Democratic tactic for convincing Americans to support abortion any time after the first trimester.

It’s tempting to believe this tactic, backed by Arizona’s Republican legislature, might be the future of fighting radically pro-abortion ballot initiatives that have successfully passed even in red states while energizing Democratic voter turnout.

There are a couple of problems with this idea, however. First, you need a hard-core legislature, secretary of state, attorney general, etc., willing to push that fight. Then, you need a court willing to call out Democratic misinformation. That’s a hard combo in a lot of states, including those run by Republicans.

Montana’s Republican attorney general, for example, fought pro-abortion groups whose proposed ballot language was vague, essentially enshrining in the state constitution that abortion providers can decide when an unborn baby is viable and what constitutes a health risk to the mother. In April, the court rejected his rewrite.

Abortion is already legal in the state up to the time of viability, and on Wednesday, that same court overturned a Montana law that required parental assent for children to obtain abortions, citing privacy concerns the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down in relation to abortion in its Dobbs decision. You see: Not all legislators, officials, or courts are up to the task.

Neither are all voters. In New York, it’s the Democrats who are currently fighting to put the word “abortion” and the phrase “LGBTQ” on the ballot, arguing that the state election commissioners’ Orwellian use of "gender expression" and "reproductive healthcare and autonomy” in the state’s Equal Rights Amendment didn’t let voters know what’s at stake.

“Compare this with what happened post-Dobbs in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, and Ohio in 2022 and 2023,” the pro-abortion editorial board of the New York Daily News wrote Thursday.

In each state, explicit abortion protections were approved by the public to be added to the state constitution with the word "abortion" or explicit abortion restrictions or limitations (again, with the word "abortion") were rejected by the public. In every instance, the protections and the bans, the word "abortion" was used. And in every case, the pro-choice position prevailed, with constitutional protections approved in California, Michigan, and Ohio and constitutional bans rejected in Kansas and Kentucky.

It’s hard to see where it’s all going to shake out, but it’s becoming increasingly clear as Democrats battle to take advantage of Americans’ innate libertarian leanings with “pro-choice” ballot measures that the next front will be the war of words.

Blaze News: Arizona permitted to call potential victims of abortion initiative 'unborn human babies' in voter pamphlet

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