While California’s Prop 8 (the gay marriage ban) is getting all the headlines, another initiative, Prop 4, is threatening even greater harm. One reason the threat is so great is that it is getting too little attention.
Prop 4 is another clone of the anti-abortion initiative California rejected in 2005 and again in 2006. The religious right keeps rolling the dice on this because they have nothing to lose and they only need to win one time to start chipping away at Roe v. Wade. For them to win in this huge, pro-choice state would empower the religious right like never before and build momentum to dismantle abortion rights from coast to coast.
2008 may be their year. Polls currently show Yes on 4 leading -- but it’s close enough that progressives can defeat it again if we are willing to work.
Prop 4 proposes an abortion restriction most voters find appealing until they think about it. In the past, we’ve been able to get voters to look close and see the dangers. This year, with Prop 8 grabbing the headlines and a Presidential race eclipsing all else, it is harder to get voters’ attention, and it is harder to get campaign volunteers and donations to help us win.
Prop 4: a dangerous initiative
Prop 4 would preclude a safe, legal abortion for anyone under 18 without parental notification. To make this appear more palatable, the authors have written in some bypass options that sound comforting but don’t work in real life. (The main bypass requires a teenager in crisis to single-handedly navigate our court system and track down a sympathetic judge while the clock is ticking. In other states, right-wing judges have abused their power in these cases, humiliating the teenagers and denying every request. But even in the best cases, this judge-hunt causes dangerous delays, making the abortion more complicated.)
Voters feel pulled to support this at first because so many voters are parents who naturally want to be involved in their daughters’ lives. What voters don’t see are statistics showing that, without this law, the overwhelming majority of pregnant teenagers in California choose to involve their parents anyway. A scared, pregnant teenager wants help, and if she can safely turn to her parents, she will. No law is needed for that. The few who do not, however, may have good reason not to; and these are the teenagers Prop 4 would tragically affect.
Phonebanking for No on Prop 4, I recently spoke to a voter who told me why she’s voting no. When she was a teenager, her best friend got pregnant. Adults advised this pregnant youth to talk to her parents about it. Reluctantly, she did so. Soon she was admitted to a hospital, not for an abortion, but for broken bones. If Prop 4 passes, that story will become more common.
Teenagers who cannot tell their parents will be placed in worse danger. Prop 4 will put a medically safe abortion off limits, and it will leave only dangerous alternatives.
These dangers don’t seem to bother the religious right. A few weeks ago, I had a voter calmly tell me that when pregnant teenagers die from back-alley abortions or suicide, they get what they deserve.
Most California voters who see the dangers, however, disagree with that hateful view, and they will vote no on Prop 4. The last two times this was on the ballot, they did. But with so many races and issues competing for attention this year, and with the media reluctant to cover an issue they already covered in 2005 and in 2006, we must work harder to ensure voters remember the dangers.
Donate money or volunteer your time here. Lives are in the balance.