For too long, so-called “Pro-Life” groups have been willing to trade the lives of babies for access to the political class.
But for the most part these establishment groups have kept it hidden.
Until this Leading “Pro-Life” group was caught pushing GOP lawmakers to allow more abortions.
Group is asking lawmakers to make law worse
In a recent letter to state legislators, Oklahomans for Life Chair Tony Lauinger argued legislators must amend the state’s strong Pro-Life law to add exceptions for rape and incest.
In other words, the head of what calls itself “Oklahoma’s leading Pro-Life group” is urging lawmakers to change a great law to make it worse, with babies’ lives in the balance.
This disgusting display of access-based politics is exactly why millions of Americans are untrusting of both politicians and the groups that claim to be lobbying them for conservative causes.
What’s even worse is the excuse Lauinger makes for wanting the legislature to allow more babies to be killed.
He says if they don’t there is a real chance the pro-abortionists will pass something worse, likely through a referendum.
That’s right, Lauinger says they’ve got to agree to kill more babies because if they don’t the other side might do something.
And this is what is wrong with most of the so-called “conservative” groups.
Immoral, unethical, and idiotic
Fortunately, Lauinger’s efforts are being blasted by many conservative Pro-Life lawmakers and real Pro-Life groups like Students for Life.
The real answer is not to pass legislation allowing more abortions but to instead limit the dangerous referendum process.
Legislatures in Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma are currently debating bills that would hike filing fees, raise the number of signatures required to get on the ballot, restrict who can collect signatures, mandate a wider geographic distribution of signatures required, and raise the vote threshold from a majority to a super majority to pass an amendment.
These bills would all have the same impact: restoring the states in question to actual Constitutional republican governments as they are supposed to be, while keeping Pro-Life legislation from being overturned by mob rule.
These moves come after watching the pro-abortion activists win all six ballot initiative fights related to abortion in 2022.
They even won in deep red conservative states like Kansas and Kentucky and some conservatives fear pro-abortionists are mobilizing to expand these efforts.
“It was a wake-up call that taught us we have a ton of work to do,” said Kelsey Pritchard, the state public affairs director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which plans to spend tens of millions of dollars on ballot initiative fights on abortion over the next two years.
“We’re going to be really engaged on these ballot measures that are often very radical and go far beyond what Roe ever did.”
Saving babies and saving the Constitution
And these efforts to reform the ballot initiative process are exactly the correct way to fight this battle.
In Mississippi, the state that brought the Dobbs case to the Supreme Court, a court order froze all ballot efforts in 2021.
Now GOP lawmakers are moving a bill that would restore the ballot initiative mechanism and at the same time prohibit voters from putting abortion-related measures on the ballot.
“I think it just continues the policy of Mississippi and our state leaders that we’re going to be a Pro-Life state,” said Mississippi state Representative Nick Bain, who authored the bill.
In other states, GOP efforts to tighten restrictions on ballot initiatives are not explicitly mentioning abortion.
And in fact, the push to change the rules began years before the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade in June of 2022.
The Left has always used ballot initiatives to pass their agenda.
Currently efforts are underway in Missouri, Ohio, and South Dakota to insert language restoring abortion rights into the states’ Constitutions.
But in Ohio some lawmakers are pushing for a proposal that would raise the voter approval threshold for Constitutional Amendments from a simple majority to 60 percent.
And in Missouri, pro-abortion groups have submitted several versions of an anti-life ballot initiative to state authorities for review.
Meanwhile lawmakers in the Show Me State are considering proposals to impose a supermajority vote requirement and mandate that the measure pass in more than half of Missouri House districts to take effect.
In Idaho, lawmakers are trying to require backers of initiative petitions to gather signatures from six percent of registered voters to qualify for the ballot.
Conservative lawmakers and advocates pushing the rule changes say they reflect their beliefs about how laws should be crafted and are not solely about abortion.
“I did not start this out due to abortion, but . . . Planned Parenthood is actively trying to enshrine a lack of protections for the unborn into Constitutions,” said North Dakota state Senator Janne Myrdal, who heads the state legislature’s Pro-Life Caucus.
“You can sit in California or New York or Washington and throw a dart, attach a couple million dollars to it, and you change our constitution,” Myrdal continued.
This is how you fight back against the pro-abortion radicals, not by trading babies’ lives for short term political traction.
Yet National Right to Life, the parent group of Lauinger’s organization, told POLITICO it backs his argument that it’s better to make exceptions for rape and incest than risk a ballot initiative.
No wonder National Right to Life has become known in Pro-Life circles as “National Right to Death.”
Pro-Life Press will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
