James, West Virginia is voting Tuesday night on a ballot measure to constitutionally ban physician assisted suicide in their state constitution. Is there any polling out on whether that ballot measure is expected to pass?
It seems there is not any polling out. The Jim Justice race has been polled lightly, the Trump race has been polled once or twice, but nobody seems to have polled Amdt. 1 yet.
Unfortunately, your footnote three gets to the crux of the issue. Lots of people really, really, really want to have thoughtless, careless, reckless sex, and it's extremely easy to get them in a panic about the possibility that their ability to have it might be impeded in the slightest way.
It is a very thorny problem, because I really don't *want* the pro-life movement to be the Junior Anti-Sex League. The pro-life movement needs to be able to keep the focus where it belongs -- on the innocent child being killed -- and *not* fall into the other side's preferred narrative that we just hate sex.
Yet the way our culture practices sex is definitely a major contributor to the prevalence of abortion... a much bigger contributor, at this point, than the usual bromides of the other side about "contraceptive access" and "accurate sex education."
"In Montana, Amendment 128 had a comfortable 60-25 lead two weeks ago—even though the same poll shows voters support restricting abortion in at least some circumstances by a margin of 62-36! Yet they are voting for an amendment to prevent that!"
The poll says 36% say abortion should be completely legal, 9% completely illegal, and 53% "available in certain circumstances." The difficulty with interpreting a poll like this is that "available in certain circumstances" is an extremely wide category that includes everything from "totally fine up until the second before birth" to "illegal in every circumstance outside of when the woman is literally and undeniably about to die it's not done." So it's really hard to assess where the majority falls into. It'd be like doing a poll to ask people if they'd rather live in a democracy or dictatorship, and then trying to interpret from the (presumably high percentage for democracy) whether they'd prefer a congressional system or a parliamentary one.
Anyway, the text of the referendum is:
"CI-128 would amend the Montana Constitution to expressly provide a right to make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion. It would prohibit the government from denying or burdening the right to abortion before fetal viability. It would also prohibit the government from denying or burdening access to an abortion when a treating healthcare professional determines it is medically indicated to protect the pregnant patient’s life or health. CI-128 prevents the government from penalizing patients, healthcare providers, or anyone who assists someone in exercising their right to make and carry out voluntary decisions about their pregnancy."
This seems more or less a reinstatement of Casey, which would fit in with the "certain circumstances" category.
> The difficulty with interpreting a poll like this is that "available in certain circumstances" is an extremely wide category that includes everything from "totally fine up until the second before birth" to "illegal in every circumstance outside of when the woman is literally and undeniably about to die it's not done."
This is absolutely true and is the main reason I generally try to avoid polls that ask this question (or the closely related "always/usually/sometimes/never legal" question, which presumes that respondents know the circumstances of "usual" abortions."
However, it isn't hard to interpret *in this specific instance*, because what Montana's abortion referendum proposes *is precisely* making abortion "totally fine up until the moment of birth."
> This seems more or less a reinstatement of Casey, which would fit in with the "certain circumstances" category.
I am sure the people who wrote this carefully crafted it to make it feel that way at a quick glance to people not well-versed in abortion law. (I suppose, if I were drafting an anti-abortion amendment, I would do the same thing in reverse.) But what CI-128 proposes goes beyond Casey and in fact beyond Roe. This is straightforward:
Pre-viability: The Casey standard was "undue burden." The Casey Court (echoing the Roe Court) recognized that the State had two substantial interests in regulating abortion prior to viability: the State's "profound interest in potential life" beginning at conception and "the health or safety of a woman seeking an abortion." These interests had to be balanced against the woman's interest in exercising what the Court saw as a right to an abortion. Sometimes those interests would win out, sometimes they would not, and the State's interest in "potential life" strengthened over the course of pregnancy. This test always came down to a judicial Rorschach test, which is one reason why it failed, but it always theoretically and often practically tolerated regulations like informed consent (Thornburgh/Akron), waiting periods, parental consent & notification, spousal notification, and reporting requirements (all of which were at stake in Casey).
In Montana CI-128, the government is "prohibited" (flatly) from "burdening" (flatly) "the right to abortion." There is no "undue" test here. This provision not only fails to recognize competing interests that might be balanced against the abortion interest; it plainly rules out the possibility of such balancing. Not a single requirement under Casey can stand, if Montana courts enforce this as-written. Indeed, not even standard medical safety regulations will be able to stand under this provision. The final sentence about never "penalizing anyone who assists" reinforces this.
And, of course, *that's the point*.
Post-viability: this is the old Doe v. Bolton / Stenberg v. Carhart trick: the text notionally allows regulation post-viability, but it makes an exception for "health." "Health" is not defined in the text. In fact, the meaning of "health" is *explicitly* left to the judgment of the *abortionist*, which explicitly *cannot be contradicted* by the State. "Health" bears a very broad meaning if not restricted by a defining clause; the Doe v. Bolton court found that it included, " all factors - physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age - relevant to the well-being of the patient."
So if a woman presents at 25 weeks and says she needs to not be pregnant anymore because her baby is a girl and her husband would be upset about having a firstborn girl, or even for utterly callous reasons (which, sadly, does happen), the abortionist needs only utter the words, "That seems to me like a health concern" and suddenly any regulations or prohibitions Montana has imposed are utterly null and void.
And, of course, *that's the point*.
The abortion side wants to win everything. Who wouldn't? Under this amendment, that's what they get: absolutely unregulated and unregulable abortion up until the second before birth.
Actually, it goes a few minutes beyond that! Under this amendment, women have a constitutional right to abortion *during* birth. Although the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act currently forbids that, Vice-President Harris aims to accomplish the decades-old Democratic goal of gutting the PBAB. (They tried blocking its passage for a decade, then tried striking it down for another four years, so this is hardly surprising.)
What's strange is that Montanan voters haven't been informed about any of this by a skeptical press or the Montana Bar. Montanan voters appear to be sleepwalking into an unregulated abortion regime without the slightest awareness, and despite the fact that they explicitly reject that regime by wide margins, and, strangely, nobody outside politics is telling them so.
(Well, strange until you think about it for two seconds and remember that the press and the Montana Bar are captured institutions.)
James,. with you, everything is either feast or famine, with 4 posts in as many days and another tomorrow, after months of radio silence!
Seriously, after Issue 1 in Ohio passed easily last fall, I'm not optimistic over any of these measures, except maybe Florida's, which has the 60% threshhold our Ohio ham-handed Republican lawmakers tried to enact. That was a special election amendment issue 3 months before Issue 1, a clear attempt to block it that everyone saw through and which failed miserably.
And which, I suspect, backfired! I don't know that Issue 1 would have passed without the threshold amendment three months earlier, but I suspect that it would have done a few points better if the Ohio legislature had not so clearly broadcast the message, "WE DON'T TRUST YOU TO MAKE THE RIGHT DECISION ON THIS AND ARE TRYING TO TAKE YOUR VOTE AWAY."
Voters hate that!
And, yes, things are definitely going to settle back down after the election, at least until the civil war starts. It's just that there's a ton of articles in the queue that *make no sense* post-election, so I have to rush them all out. (It's been a very long weekend, though, and I am ready to REST.)
If I'm looking correctly, we won Florida, have a solid lead in South Dakota, are too close to call in Nebraska, and are losing in Missouri (and presumably the rest).
Ah, it looks like we did lose Missouri, possibly while I typed this. But the pro-aborts only reached 53% in the end (still some vote out). It's terrible, terrible news for the unborn in Missouri, but frankly I expected worse.
James, West Virginia is voting Tuesday night on a ballot measure to constitutionally ban physician assisted suicide in their state constitution. Is there any polling out on whether that ballot measure is expected to pass?
It seems there is not any polling out. The Jim Justice race has been polled lightly, the Trump race has been polled once or twice, but nobody seems to have polled Amdt. 1 yet.
Great, thanks!
Unfortunately, your footnote three gets to the crux of the issue. Lots of people really, really, really want to have thoughtless, careless, reckless sex, and it's extremely easy to get them in a panic about the possibility that their ability to have it might be impeded in the slightest way.
It is a very thorny problem, because I really don't *want* the pro-life movement to be the Junior Anti-Sex League. The pro-life movement needs to be able to keep the focus where it belongs -- on the innocent child being killed -- and *not* fall into the other side's preferred narrative that we just hate sex.
Yet the way our culture practices sex is definitely a major contributor to the prevalence of abortion... a much bigger contributor, at this point, than the usual bromides of the other side about "contraceptive access" and "accurate sex education."
I'm really not sure how to address this.
"In Montana, Amendment 128 had a comfortable 60-25 lead two weeks ago—even though the same poll shows voters support restricting abortion in at least some circumstances by a margin of 62-36! Yet they are voting for an amendment to prevent that!"
The poll says 36% say abortion should be completely legal, 9% completely illegal, and 53% "available in certain circumstances." The difficulty with interpreting a poll like this is that "available in certain circumstances" is an extremely wide category that includes everything from "totally fine up until the second before birth" to "illegal in every circumstance outside of when the woman is literally and undeniably about to die it's not done." So it's really hard to assess where the majority falls into. It'd be like doing a poll to ask people if they'd rather live in a democracy or dictatorship, and then trying to interpret from the (presumably high percentage for democracy) whether they'd prefer a congressional system or a parliamentary one.
Anyway, the text of the referendum is:
"CI-128 would amend the Montana Constitution to expressly provide a right to make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion. It would prohibit the government from denying or burdening the right to abortion before fetal viability. It would also prohibit the government from denying or burdening access to an abortion when a treating healthcare professional determines it is medically indicated to protect the pregnant patient’s life or health. CI-128 prevents the government from penalizing patients, healthcare providers, or anyone who assists someone in exercising their right to make and carry out voluntary decisions about their pregnancy."
This seems more or less a reinstatement of Casey, which would fit in with the "certain circumstances" category.
> The difficulty with interpreting a poll like this is that "available in certain circumstances" is an extremely wide category that includes everything from "totally fine up until the second before birth" to "illegal in every circumstance outside of when the woman is literally and undeniably about to die it's not done."
This is absolutely true and is the main reason I generally try to avoid polls that ask this question (or the closely related "always/usually/sometimes/never legal" question, which presumes that respondents know the circumstances of "usual" abortions."
However, it isn't hard to interpret *in this specific instance*, because what Montana's abortion referendum proposes *is precisely* making abortion "totally fine up until the moment of birth."
> This seems more or less a reinstatement of Casey, which would fit in with the "certain circumstances" category.
I am sure the people who wrote this carefully crafted it to make it feel that way at a quick glance to people not well-versed in abortion law. (I suppose, if I were drafting an anti-abortion amendment, I would do the same thing in reverse.) But what CI-128 proposes goes beyond Casey and in fact beyond Roe. This is straightforward:
Pre-viability: The Casey standard was "undue burden." The Casey Court (echoing the Roe Court) recognized that the State had two substantial interests in regulating abortion prior to viability: the State's "profound interest in potential life" beginning at conception and "the health or safety of a woman seeking an abortion." These interests had to be balanced against the woman's interest in exercising what the Court saw as a right to an abortion. Sometimes those interests would win out, sometimes they would not, and the State's interest in "potential life" strengthened over the course of pregnancy. This test always came down to a judicial Rorschach test, which is one reason why it failed, but it always theoretically and often practically tolerated regulations like informed consent (Thornburgh/Akron), waiting periods, parental consent & notification, spousal notification, and reporting requirements (all of which were at stake in Casey).
In Montana CI-128, the government is "prohibited" (flatly) from "burdening" (flatly) "the right to abortion." There is no "undue" test here. This provision not only fails to recognize competing interests that might be balanced against the abortion interest; it plainly rules out the possibility of such balancing. Not a single requirement under Casey can stand, if Montana courts enforce this as-written. Indeed, not even standard medical safety regulations will be able to stand under this provision. The final sentence about never "penalizing anyone who assists" reinforces this.
And, of course, *that's the point*.
Post-viability: this is the old Doe v. Bolton / Stenberg v. Carhart trick: the text notionally allows regulation post-viability, but it makes an exception for "health." "Health" is not defined in the text. In fact, the meaning of "health" is *explicitly* left to the judgment of the *abortionist*, which explicitly *cannot be contradicted* by the State. "Health" bears a very broad meaning if not restricted by a defining clause; the Doe v. Bolton court found that it included, " all factors - physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age - relevant to the well-being of the patient."
So if a woman presents at 25 weeks and says she needs to not be pregnant anymore because her baby is a girl and her husband would be upset about having a firstborn girl, or even for utterly callous reasons (which, sadly, does happen), the abortionist needs only utter the words, "That seems to me like a health concern" and suddenly any regulations or prohibitions Montana has imposed are utterly null and void.
And, of course, *that's the point*.
The abortion side wants to win everything. Who wouldn't? Under this amendment, that's what they get: absolutely unregulated and unregulable abortion up until the second before birth.
Actually, it goes a few minutes beyond that! Under this amendment, women have a constitutional right to abortion *during* birth. Although the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act currently forbids that, Vice-President Harris aims to accomplish the decades-old Democratic goal of gutting the PBAB. (They tried blocking its passage for a decade, then tried striking it down for another four years, so this is hardly surprising.)
What's strange is that Montanan voters haven't been informed about any of this by a skeptical press or the Montana Bar. Montanan voters appear to be sleepwalking into an unregulated abortion regime without the slightest awareness, and despite the fact that they explicitly reject that regime by wide margins, and, strangely, nobody outside politics is telling them so.
(Well, strange until you think about it for two seconds and remember that the press and the Montana Bar are captured institutions.)
Footnote #4 is like a teaser trailer for the main feature… can’t wait to see it come out!
James,. with you, everything is either feast or famine, with 4 posts in as many days and another tomorrow, after months of radio silence!
Seriously, after Issue 1 in Ohio passed easily last fall, I'm not optimistic over any of these measures, except maybe Florida's, which has the 60% threshhold our Ohio ham-handed Republican lawmakers tried to enact. That was a special election amendment issue 3 months before Issue 1, a clear attempt to block it that everyone saw through and which failed miserably.
And which, I suspect, backfired! I don't know that Issue 1 would have passed without the threshold amendment three months earlier, but I suspect that it would have done a few points better if the Ohio legislature had not so clearly broadcast the message, "WE DON'T TRUST YOU TO MAKE THE RIGHT DECISION ON THIS AND ARE TRYING TO TAKE YOUR VOTE AWAY."
Voters hate that!
And, yes, things are definitely going to settle back down after the election, at least until the civil war starts. It's just that there's a ton of articles in the queue that *make no sense* post-election, so I have to rush them all out. (It's been a very long weekend, though, and I am ready to REST.)
If I'm looking correctly, we won Florida, have a solid lead in South Dakota, are too close to call in Nebraska, and are losing in Missouri (and presumably the rest).
Missouri much closer than expected! I thought we would have lost by now, but instead I'm not actually sure we will lose. (We will probably lose.)
Ah, it looks like we did lose Missouri, possibly while I typed this. But the pro-aborts only reached 53% in the end (still some vote out). It's terrible, terrible news for the unborn in Missouri, but frankly I expected worse.