The plague of extreme anti-abortion legislation has spread to nine states in 2019 alone. Now, between legislation introduced by Republicans last month and ballot drives launched by anti-abortion groups last week, that plague may be on the cusp of infecting Michigan.
In May, Republican legislators introduced two separate bills to interfere with women’s ability to access abortion care. One bill would make it illegal to terminate a pregnancy as early as the six-week mark, before many women even realize they’re pregnant. The other would ban dilation and extraction, the safest and most common procedure used to terminate second-trimester pregnancies.
But these pieces of legislation aren’t the most pressing threat to women’s rights, since even if both bills pass, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has vowed to veto them. The real problem is the two recently certified ballot proposals with the same goals as the bills introduced by the state’s Republicans: One would institute a six-week abortion ban, and the other would ban dilation and extraction. If the groups behind the ballot proposals succeed in collecting the 340,047 signatures they need on each proposal, reflecting the will of less than 3% of Michigan residents, the proposals won’t have to go before voters. Rather than facing defeat at the polls in a state where 56% of residents support abortion rights, a quirk in Michigan’s state constitution will allow Republican legislators to bypass Whitmer’s veto and adopt the ballot measures themselves.
A spokesperson for the group behind the six-week ban proposal has made it clear that subverting democracy is part of his organization’s game plan. Mark Gurley of the misnamed Michigan Heartbeat Coalition told a Michigan Public Radio station last month that his group doesn’t actually want their proposal to go to the ballot. When it comes to allowing the state’s voters to weigh in, “We’re looking to skip that part,” he said.
While there is no word yet about exactly when the anti-choice petitions will be on the streets, on June 19 the AP quoted extremist groups as saying they would get started “within days.”
Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, a pro-choice Catholic Democrat, told Daily Kos that the organizations behind the petition drives are “setting up a situation whereby 3 or 4% of the population can create a law in the state of Michigan.”
“I think it's pretty clear that what they're after is a wholesale ban,” added Planned Parenthood spokesperson Angela Vasquez-Giroux. “It doesn't matter to them what the procedure is or at what point in a pregnancy a person needs an abortion, they just don't want anyone to have access to it, no matter what, no matter when.”
In addition to attempting an end run around democracy, the anti-choice groups are also using misleading, inflammatory, and just plain inaccurate language to describe their proposals. The Michigan Heartbeat Coalition, which is behind the proposal to ban abortions at roughly six weeks after conception, has named its organization and ballot proposal to imply that even fetuses in the very earliest stages of pregnancy have an actual heart that can beat.
The reality is very different.
"Pregnancy and fetal development are a continuum. What is interpreted as a heartbeat in these bills is actually electrically induced flickering of a portion of the fetal tissue that will become the heart as the embryo develops,” said Ted Anderson, the president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “Thus, ACOG does not use the term 'heartbeat' to describe these legislative bans on abortion because it is misleading language, out of step with the anatomical and clinical realities of that stage of pregnancy,” he said in a statement quoted by The Guardian.
Right to Life of Michigan, one of the organizations behind the proposal to ban dilation and evacuation procedures, is among the anti-choice groups that have chosen to call the safest method for terminating a second-trimester abortion a “dismemberment” procedure. “First of all, this is the safest procedure that leads to the least amount of complications for a patient,” said Vasquez-Giroux. The UCLA College of Obstetrics and Gynecology also calls dilation and extraction “one of the safest medical procedures.”
“Everything else that could be available at that point in a pregnancy ... has the potential to lead to complications down the line should the person become pregnant again later,” Planned Parenthood’s Vasquez-Giroux continued. “So [the proposed ban is] ... really removing the only option for the vast majority of the patients at that point in their pregnancy.”
In May, Sen. McMorrow spoke out against the state legislature’s bill to ban dilation and evacuation procedures. During her remarks, she shared the story of two of her constituents who had faced the horrifying choice of having to terminate a wanted pregnancy when, at roughly 20 weeks, the fetus was diagnosed with a terminal abnormality that prevented its bones from developing normally.
In addition to sharing the couple’s story, McMorrow told Daily Kos that she brought them to Lansing to personally lobby her fellow legislators. “I was hoping to stop the bills before they came to the floor, thinking maybe some of my colleagues had never met someone who had gone through something like this. But it didn’t stop the bills from moving forward,” she said. McMorrow added that, sadly, she believes the anti-abortion ballot measures have a good chance of becoming law, regardless of public opinion. “I’m fairly confident,” she said, that the anti-choice forces will get the signatures they need to put their proposals before legislative Republicans. Once they get there, she said, “We elected a lot of really great people in 2018, but not enough. And not enough to stop this from passing.”
While the situation is potentially dire for Michiganders facing an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy, there are reasons for hope. The first is that, at least so far, Roe v. Wade still defines the law in America. And according to the Guttmacher Institute, “federal and state courts have consistently blocked enforcement of laws that ban abortion before 13 weeks” after a woman’s last menstrual period.
But even if Roe is overturned by Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has no intention of prosecuting either women seeking abortion care or physicians who provide it, should the anti-choice organizations succeed. “I believe that our limited resources are better used to prevent and address serious crimes that impact our community, and to protect consumers and the vulnerable members of our community, rather than to enforce laws that divide our community, create untenable choices for women and healthcare providers, and erode trust in the justice system,” said Nessel in a statement provided to Daily Kos.
Dawn Wolfe is a freelance writer and journalist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
This post was written and reported through our Daily Kos freelance program.