tRUMP'S LIES CORRECTED BELOW.
Informed voters understand the issue.
Campaigners on Wednesday turned in 823,685 signatures—more than double the 383,923 required—to the Arizona secretary of state's office to get a proposed state constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights on the November ballot.
"What we're turning in is a show of strength of the campaign, but also strength of the issue of protecting abortion," said Chris Love, a spokesperson for Arizona for Abortion Access. "And I'm confident that we will obviously appear on the ballot, but more importantly, I'm confident that we'll win in November."
County election officials and Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes will now work on reviewing the signatures and formally certifying the ballot measure by late next month.
Arizona for Abortion Access campaign manager Cheryl Bruce declared that "this is the most signatures ever gathered for a ballot measure in Arizona history, which is a testament to the broad support among Arizona voters for restoring and protecting abortion access in Arizona."
"An astonishing signature collection effort from volunteers, organizers, advocates, patients, and providers in Arizona has made this moment possible."
The Arizona Republicreported that "the secretary of state does not keep data that would easily confirm the number of signatures is the most in state history," but "the number far outpaces that of popular petition campaigns in recent years."
Fontes' office does publish voter registration data. As of April, there were 4,058,320 registered voters—meaning more than 1 in 5 signed their names in support of the abortion rights campaign, which is backed by groups including the ACLU of Arizona, the Fairness Project, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona, and Reproductive Freedom for All Arizona.
"An astonishing signature collection effort from volunteers, organizers, advocates, patients, and providers in Arizona has made this moment possible, and we're thrilled to be part of it," said Fairness Project executive director Kelly Hall in a statement.
"While extreme politicians in Phoenix have allowed a 15-week abortion ban to block patients from getting the care they need, the Arizona for Abortion Access campaign has worked tirelessly to let voters have a say in their own healthcare decisions," she continued. "The enthusiasm we've seen from Arizona voters for this constitutional amendment is unprecedented, and we're ready to stand with them through Election Day and restore the reproductive freedom they deserve."
The effort to pass the Arizona Abortion Access Act began last summer—before a nationally watched legal battle earlier this year: The Arizona Supreme Court upheld an 1864 abortion ban that included no exceptions for rape or incest, then the Arizona Legislature passed and Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs signed a bill to repeal it.
Still, in addition to banning abortion after 15 weeks, Arizona has rules that make it harder to get care. The proposed amendment would affirm a fundamental right to abortion until fetal viability and limit state restrictions. It would also protect access to care after viability if a healthcare provider determines ending a pregnancy is needed for the patient's life or health.
Reproductive freedom has been a key issue at all levels of American politics since the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority reversedRoe v. Wade with their Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling two years ago, which bolstered GOP efforts to attack access to abortion care—along with birth control.
It remains a top issue going into the November election. Along with choosing which party controls the White House and Congress, voters in several states are set to weigh in on ballot measures designed to protect reproductive rights. The Associated Presspublished a graphic showing the states where such measures are on the ballot pending:
"Supporters of an Arkansas proposal to scale back the state's abortion ban face a Friday deadline to submit petitions to qualify for the November ballot," according to the AP. "The group behind the measure, Arkansans for Limited Government, said on Facebook and Instagram on Tuesday that it still needed 8,200 signatures out of the 90,704 required."
Trump’s repeat falsehoods included his assertions that some Democratic-led states allow babies to be executed after birth, that every legal scholar and everybody in general wanted Roe v. Wade overturned,
Trump on abortion policy after Roe v. Wade
Trump repeated his frequent claim that “everybody” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned and the power to set abortion policy returned to individual states. He said: “Everybody wanted to get it back to the states, everybody, without exception: Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives. Everybody wanted it back. Religious leaders.” He also added: “ Every legal scholar wanted it that way.”
Facts First: Trump’s claims arefalse. Poll after poll has shown that most Americans – two-thirds or nearly two-thirds of respondents in multiple polls – wish Roe would have been preserved. And multiple legal scholars have told CNN that they had wanted Roe preserved.
A CNN poll conducted by SSRS in April 2024 found 65% of adults opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe. That’s nearly identical to the result of a CNN poll conducted by SSRS in July 2022, the month after the decision. Similarly, a Marquette Law School poll in February 2024 found 67% of adults opposed the decision that overturned Roe.
A NBC News poll in June 2023 found 61% opposition among registered voters to the decision that overturned Roe. A Gallup poll in May 2023 found 61% of adults called the decision a bad thing.
And “any claim that all legal scholars wanted Roe overturned is mind-numbingly false,” Rutgers Law School professor Kimberly Mutcherson, a legal scholar who supported the preservation of Roe, said in April.
“Donald Trump’s claim is flatly incorrect,” another legal scholar who did not want Roe overturned, Maya Manian, an American University law professor and faculty director of the university’s Health Law and Policy Program, said in April.
Trump’s claim is “obviously not” true, said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who is an expert on the history of the US abortion debate. Ziegler, who also did not want Roe overturned, said in an April interview: “Most legal scholars probably track most Americans, who didn’t want to overturn Roe. … It wasn’t as if legal scholars were somehow outliers.”
It is true that some legal scholars who support abortion rights wished that Roe had been written differently; the late liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of them. But Ziegler noted that although “there was a cottage industry of legal scholars kind of rewriting Roe – ‘what Roe should’ve said’ — that isn’t saying Roe should’ve been overturned. Those are very different things.”
You can read more here.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
Trump on Democrats and abortion
Trump repeated his frequent claim that Democrats will kill babies in the “eighth month, the ninth month of pregnancy, or even after birth.” After Biden said that he would “restore Roe v. Wade” if reelected, Trump said, “So that means he can take the life of the baby in the ninth month and even after birth, because some states – Democrat-run – take it after birth.”Trump pointed to the former Virginia governor’s support of a bill that would loosen restrictions on late-term abortions as an example.
Trump also said later in the debate that some “Democrat-run” states allow babies to be killed after birth.
Facts First: Trump’s claim about Democrats killing babies after birth is nonsense; that is infanticide and illegal in all 50 states. A very small percentage of abortions happen at or after 21 weeks of pregnancy.
According to data published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just 0.9% of reported abortions in 2020 occurred at 21 weeks or later. (Many of these abortions occur because of serious health risks or lethal fetal anomalies.) By contrast, 80.9% of reported abortions in 2020 were conducted before 10 weeks, 93.1% before 14 weeks and 95.8% before 16 weeks.
Trump invoked controversial comments made in 2019 by Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, as he voiced support for a state measure that would significantly loosen restrictions on late-term abortions when the fetus was not viable. Northam was not talking about infanticide, which Virginia continues to prohibit.
There are some cases in which parents decide to choose palliative care for babies who are born with deadly conditions that give them just minutes, hours or days to live. That is simply not the same as killing a baby.
From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Jen Christensen
EXCERPTS FROM:
Trump made more than 30 false claims during CNN’s presidential debate — far more than Biden
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.