Oct. 13 – A bill proposed for next month’s ballot would change state constitutions if approved, specifically stating that the constitution does not provide for abortion rights.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution states: Do I have the right to have an abortion or to request funds for an abortion?”
A representative of Kentucky’s anti-abortion advocacy group says the language is necessary to protect against what he called “a tribunal of activists inventing constitutional abortion rights.”
Election officials from the Pro-Abortion Coalition, which opposes the amendment, say the ballot measure resembles the language used in other states to bring non-political voters to the polls to vote against it. Stated.
Ballot Measure 2 amends the state bill of rights. This action is supported by an affiliated group, “Yes for Life,” which includes organizations such as the Kentucky Baptist Foundation, Kentucky Lights to Life, the Catholic Conference, and the Family Foundation.
David Walls, executive director of the Family Foundation, said Wednesday that he has not seen any polls specific to constitutional change, but his group feels a constitutional change is needed.
“What the Kentucky Constitution needs is to clarify that Law has been overturned,” Walls said. It did not,” and returned the matter to individual states.
Walls said pro-abortion groups “implied that the state now has abortion rights” and asked the courts to arbitrate.
Kentucky’s ballot wording is also used in other states, including Louisiana, according to Walls.
Walls said the bill’s language on state funding for abortion would discourage pro-abortion groups from seeking state funding for abortion.
“With the White House, which certainly supports abortion, they are trying to be creative to find ways to take the lives of unborn children.” “This is the first time[the people]have had the opportunity to vote on an anti-life-and-death constitutional amendment.”
Rachel Sweet, campaign manager for Protect Kentucky Access, said ballot language is being used in states such as Tennessee, West Virginia and Kansas. In August, voters in Kansas rejected an amendment that said the state constitution had no right to abortion.
Polls showed that a majority of voters opposed the Kansas Amendment. Sweet said a vote on Kentucky’s amendment would be close.
“Every vote counts,” she said.
Protect Kentucky Access includes groups such as the Fairness Alliance, the Kentucky Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Kentucky Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and Planned Parenthood. Project Kentucky has responded positively to his Access campaign, Sweet said.
“We’ve been knocking on our door for weeks,” she said. “People now have more awareness of the Second Amendment.”
According to Sweet, opposition to the amendments does not come from just one side of the political spectrum.
“We’re hearing from Republicans, Democrats, and libertarians that they’re voting ‘no’ for Two,” Sweet said. While some voters say they are undecided or will vote for the amendment, others say they feel the effort to ban abortion in Kentucky is “too extreme.”
“One of the things we’ve seen in Kansas is that this issue is really motivating a lot of voters, especially voters who don’t usually show up in midterm election years,” she said. rice field.
Sweet was Kansas’s manager for constitutional freedoms at the Kansas constitutional reform debate, but one of the reasons the bill was rejected in Kansas was because younger voters turned out to vote. Yes, and it could happen in Kentucky, he said.
“It’s not something we take for granted,” Sweet said of young voter turnout.
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