No Ballot Measures for 2024
For the full list of referendums we’re tracking, see our home page.
Remove Involuntary Servitude as Punishment for a Crime from Constitution Amendment
Hoped for Ballot: Not yet in the works
While this was voted on November 8, 2022, the Ballotpedia page says:
The legislative sponsor of Amendment 7, State Rep. Edmond Jordan (D), began urging voters to reject the measure. Jordan said, “The way that the ballot language is stated it is confusing. And the way that it was drafted it could lead to multiple different conclusions or opinions. Because of the ambiguity of how it was drafted, I’m asking that people vote against it, so that we can go and clean it up with the intent of bringing it back next year and making sure that the language is clear and unambiguous. Regardless of what happens, we’re going to have to bring it back to get it cleared up either way. But either way, it is my intent to bring it back next year and make sure that the language is clearer, and that there is no confusion.” The Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus and Louisiana House Democrats have also come out in opposition to the amendment.
There were also those who thought the wording on the ballot was confusing.
This was indeed defeated, but if the very sponsor of the amendment asked for it to be due to unclear wording and the need for a second try, we’ll not account this as a loss, but rather a first attempt. A version with cleaner language will hopefully be coming; no word yet.
See our Topic Page: Finally Abolishing Slavery for details on other states.
Comparing Abortion and Slavery
There’s been a long-standing tradition of pro-lifers comparing abortion to the way slavery was practiced in the United States, on the grounds that both require dehumanizing. This is so extreme that killing human beings – unborn children and enslaved people — is legally allowed. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in both Roe v. Wade and in the Dred Scot decisions that certain classes of human beings were outside legal protection.
While abortion defenders object to the analogy, they do so by defending abortion, not by defending slavery. Naturally – they share the understanding that holding people in slavery is appalling. Nowadays, that’s the common attitude in the United States.
People generally understand that the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery. Several state constitutions, drafter in the years soon thereafter, did the same. These were well after the principle was established nationally. They simply had such a provision for the state constitution in addition.
But neither the nation nor many of these states abolished slavery entirely. They had an exception: people duly convicted of a crime.
The immediate impact in the U.S. was that slavery was able to continue. African Americans would be arrested for “vagrancy,” which means essentially being arrested for being unemployed. If that’s the “crime” that got a person into prison, and someone in prison could be enslaved, then slavery hadn’t really ended.
More recently, the use of cheap prison labor for manufactured goods used by government and nonprofits has meant that prisoners are slaves. In some states, they’re paid nothing; in most states, then get a few cents per hour, and the highest is $2 an hour.
There was a prisoners’ strike against these conditions in 2018, and another one in 2022, where the slavery exception is one of the things in contention.
While their lives are legally protected, they’re still being exploited. The working conditions can include physical harm and even avoidable deaths. Such is the nature of treating people as slaves. People in prison should be treated as people in prison.
Kinds of harm are all connected when dehumanizing is done. If prisoners must do involuntary servitude, they have little pay for themselves, and no pay to send their families. They haven’t always developed the kind of working skills that will help them get employment once out of prison.
Anything that harms families this way will harm a spirit of welcoming new members to the family. That is, these conditions increase the danger of abortions being done in an atmosphere where they’re so readily available.
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