Dem
51
GOP
49
Another day, another swing state with a ballot initiative meant to protect abortion access. Arizona for Abortion Access, a coalition that includes the ACLU of Arizona, Reproductive Freedom for All Arizona and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona, has announced that it has collected enough signatures to put abortion rights before voters in November.
At the moment, abortions are banned in Arizona after 15 weeks unless the life of the mother is threatened, and an upcoming court case could uphold an 1864 law and ban them all. The pro-choice groups say they have 500,000 signatures when only 383,923 are needed, and they are still 3 months from the deadline to make the ballot. Since Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) is on the blue team, it is improbable that he will engage in shenanigans to try to keep the measure off the ballot. So, you can pretty much pencil it in right now.
At the moment, there are four states scheduled to vote on abortion-protecting measures; in addition to Arizona there are Florida, of course, Maryland and New York. The first two of those have very competitive Senate elections this year, the third has a Senate election that just might be competitive now that former governor Larry Hogan (R) is in, and in the fourth, an increase in Democratic turnout could be key to winning swingy House districts. Indeed, between just Florida and New York, it is well within the realm of possibility that abortion initiatives by themselves will give control of the House of Representatives back to the Democrats. If so, we wonder how George Washington would react if you told him that arguing over abortion led to a Black guy becoming Speaker of the House.
Meanwhile, there are efforts underway to get abortion initiatives on the ballots in seven other states: Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota. If the Democrats could pick, they would surely rank Montana first, Nevada second and Missouri third given the U.S. Senate races in those places. The blue team would love to also give an assist to Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) but, of course, the Buckeye State already voted on abortion access. (Z)