Here we offer some ideas, and we welcome others to add to the list. These could give ideas for referendums and also for legislation – whether using the ideas as is or using them to improve other approaches. Send any ideas, or further information or artwork that you have about the ideas below, to referendums@consistent-life.org
Ideas developed below are:
The Right to Redress Approach (Abortion)
The Positive Protection Approach (Abortion)
Conscientious Objection on State Taxes (Abortion and Death Penalty)
We also add some ideas that are already making progress at the bottom.
The Right to Redress Approach
This is a women’s rights approach, where we pay attention to the rights women are actually denied with readily-available abortion.
David Reardon of the Elliot Institute offers this as sample wording:
Any woman exposed to a coerced, unwanted, unsafe or unnecessary induced abortion shall have an unwaivable and unlimited rights of recourse against any party who performed, referred, aided or abetted said abortion for actual damages, punitive damages, mental suffering, emotional distress, psychological trauma, wrongful death of the aborted child, suffering, inconvenience, loss of society or companionship, loss of consortium, or injury to reputation, plus an award for reasonable costs and attorney’s fees.
He has also worked on several variations and additions, considering the circumstances of different states.
Dr. Reardon also has some preliminary survey data indicating women’s strong support for the concept, which is actually higher among women who’ve had abortions. He can be reached at:
David C. Reardon, Ph.D.
(636) 486-6918
Elliot Institute
There are three situations where this approach can be especially useful:
- A state which does or might ban abortion, but has a petition drive for a state constitutional amendment to make abortion a right. If an amendment with this approach is either added by another petition drive or by the legislature, having both on the ballot will allow for better framing of the issue.
- It could be legislation by a state legislature after such a state constitutional amendment has passed.
- In a state which is going to have abortion be legal for the foreseeable future because support there is strong, this way of framing the issue may be more appealing.
Advantages:
- Abortion availability advocates are now the ones in the position of opposing women’s rights if they oppose this.
- They have to oppose it. There are far too many women who would file suit if a cause of action to do so exists.
- This addresses both abortions that will remain legal, and abortions that are illegal in states that have banned them, especially with the shipping of pills. The safety record of those pills for women is commonly misrepresented in the media, and the use of pressure or slipping a woman a pill without her knowledge has become a major danger.
The Positive Protection Approach
Coloradoans worked hard to get a ban on late-term abortions on the ballot in November of 2020, figuring that polls showed more discomfort with late-term. They lost and lost badly.
Now that Roe has been overturned, a lot of people are thinking in these terms: what can be done in states where the legislature won’t act? It’s still true that late-term abortions repulse most people more than earlier ones do, but possibilities for earlier protection are now open.
The Colorado loss was predictable. People tend to dislike bans and prohibitions. This has been shown in post-Dobbs state constitutional amendment petition drives. They’re successful because people are voting against bans.
The case could instead be cast in terms of protection. It’s the difference between saying “Smoking is banned here” or “We’re pleased to provide a smoke-free environment.” The same behavior is expected, but framing matters.
But couldn’t the framing be improved even more if other protections were added, thus clarifying that protection is really what’s meant? The case for voting yes could then persuade far more voters.
Here we start a list. It started with a focus on late-term abortions because that was one of the few possibilities under the Roe regime. But expanding any of these to earlier ages is now a real possibility. Additionally, in some states it may make more sense to instead attach these provisions to a referendum to stop taxpayer funding of abortions.
Anyone with ideas to add can send them to referendums@consistent-life.org.
- Does the state have universal health coverage for obstetrics? If not, add a coverage program to the referendum.
- What about health coverage for the prenatal child directly? Some need surgery or other care separate from obstetrics. Knowing such care happens also helps humanize the child in voters’ minds.
- How will a newborn with disabilities be treated? Can there be needed improvements added to the referendum?
- How well does the state do interventions for sex trafficking, family violence, and sexual abuse? Studies show women subjected to these are over-represented in those getting abortions. This may be even more true when abortion-seeking is delayed. Programs that prevent or provide treatment after these practices will protect babies and, obviously, their mothers too.
- Soon after the Dobbs decision came down, Georgia passed legislation that made babies tax deductible not at birth but at first heartbeat. They also had child support obligations from the father start at that time. These and other provisions that assert fetal personhood also obviously benefit their mothers, and in some cases both parents.
Ann Scheidler of the Pro-life Action League comments: “I love your suggestions for framing the protection of unborn life in a broader, more appealing language, and adding important safeguards for children with compromising health conditions.”
In some states, especially the strong abortion-promoting ones, putting some of these protections for unborn children on the ballot without anything about abortion might be a sound strategy to start building the pro-life case in the public’s mind. That is, while in some states putting them both together would be the best strategy, in others it might work better as a practical matter to have two steps: one for the needs and benefits that communicate that unborn children are real people and should be treated that way, and then the second step pointing out that not letting them be killed is an obvious follow-up.
Addendum: Here’s a page that lists the individual Planned Parenthood (PP) locations in the United States that don’t have a Community Health Center (CHC) within 5 miles. Getting more resources to establish CHCs and fund those that already exist is a good way to divert people toward better health care; by definition, CHCs don’t do abortions, whereas PP promotes them.
Conscientious Objection on State Taxes
While the Hyde Amendment bans U.S. federal tax money from paying for abortions through Medicaid, there are 16 states that fund abortion with their state tax dollars. These will of course be states that continue to promote abortion after the Dobbs decision.
There are 28 states that still have the death penalty on the books, with highly expensive death rows.
blue bold = have provisions for referendums to be put on the ballot by petition.
See this Ballotpedia page for petition requirements by state.
Fund abortion but have no death penalty:
Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Vermont, and Washington.
Fund the death penalty but not abortion:
Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota,Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.
These states fund both abortion and the death penalty:
California, Illinois, Montana, and Oregon.
There’s an approach to try, to see if it works: the model of the Peace Tax Fund. This proposed bill allows people to be conscientious objectors to having their taxes go to war — and provides that those dollars go into specified alternatives. The portion going to the objectionable activity is calculated with a formula, and that’s the percentage of dollars that goes to an alternative fund.
Wars aren’t generally conducted by U.S. states, of course, but the principle could apply to both abortion and the death penalty. People are often startled to realize how very expensive the death penalty is, with the trials and appeals of death sentences, so there’s a portion of their state tax dollars that opponents of the death penalty shouldn’t be forced to pay.
There may be voters who have no problem with their own tax dollars going to abortion or executions who might nevertheless be sympathetic to having those with problems of conscience able to re-direct their dollars to places that don’t bother their consciences. Especially if they’re good-sounding programs.
Some states will also have military-related expenditures that could be included in this concept.
What would the alternative fund for taxpayer dollars look like?
In the case of abortion, it would be tempting to have them go to pregnancy help centers. However, it may be counterproductive to have opponents decrying the place the funds go, as unfair as that is – in a political campaign, we want to make the case as appealing to as many voters as possible. It may be more strategically sound to select funds that are already established with the state government but need more resources, having to do with prenatal care and support for new mothers and fathers.
In the case of executions, there may be a fund for restorative justice programs with juveniles, or various other well-done murder-prevention programs that take a positive approach that those of us with desires for nonviolent approaches could be enthusiastic about.
Goals
One of the goals of this referendum would be to allow conscientious objection to taxes for killing, but it could end up doing much more than that.
Say people have a way to designate on their state tax forms that they want abortion money to go to (say) the prenatal care fund instead, and also the ability to say they want their money to go to (say) restorative justice programs. Then not only will those programs get more money, but people being allowed to take that stand will be much more noticeable.
In the five states that have abortion funding and executions, it will show how many taxpayers have conscientious objection to both.
Some Ideas Already Making Progress
- Requiring schools to teach about fetal development is as basic as it gets for persuasion. Live Action has a Baby Olivia video on the web for anyone. There’s also been proposals or actual passing of legislation for this in at least Kentucky, Iowa, North Dakota, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
- Back from the Brink is getting municipalities and states to pass resolutions against nuclear weapons. These are non-binding, of course, since those jurisdictions aren’t responsible for nuclear weapons. But more and more of these resolutions could have an impact on those who are responsible.
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