The Right To Decide

By GENE NICHOL

We learned in August that voters in Arizona and Missouri will decide whether to enshrine a presumptive right to abortion in their state constitutions. 65% of likely Arizona voters told pollsters they support the measure. More signatures were gathered to place the issue on the ballot than has ever occurred in Arizona history.

Similar proposals are already on the ballot in Nevada, South Dakota, Colorado, Florida, New York and Maryland. In the two years since the Dobbs decision, abortion rights supporters have prevailed in all seven states where the issue has been put before the voters. Something of a pattern appears.

North Carolina, sadly, doesn’t recognize the right to initiative. But an abortion amendment could be placed on the ballot if referred by the General Assembly. State Sen. Rachel Hunt (D-Mecklenburg) has attempted to do exactly that — filing the “Protect Women’s Healthcare” proposal (Senate Bill 909).

Republican leaders made sure it went nowhere. Even though they are perennial advocates of a wild and often silly array of state constitutional amendment offerings, they apparently don’t want to hear from Tar Heels on one of the most vital personal liberty questions to arise in North Carolina history. I’m guessing they’re a little frightened by the gale that’s blowing. So much for the will of the people.

And it’s not that North Carolina Republicans don’t want to change the state constitution in November. Following the advice of election-denying Donald Trump lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, Republicans have already placed on the ballot a measure to alter the language of Art. VI, sec. 1 of the NC Constitution. It would say, if passed, “only a citizen of the United States who is 18 years of age” can vote in the state.

It wouldn’t change North Carolina’s constitutional and statutory requirements in any meaningful way. But it does follow the Republican political playbook – turning out the base by implying, falsely, that undocumented immigrants are voting in North Carolina elections. They aren’t. And won’t be. But better to throw up the fictitious specter than focus on women’s crucial, life-altering, reproductive freedoms. Why pay attention to what’s real when you can dwell on the animosity-laced terrain of the fake? How Trumpian.

Republicans got surprising (and disappointing) levels of support from Democrats on the “citizens only” referral. I’m guessing many were reluctant to be beaten over then head in November for a provision that doesn’t actually do anything.

Jim Womack, president of the hilariously-named North Carolina Election Integrity Team, said Republican lawmakers would support the proposed constitutional change “simply because it will bring conservatives to the polls.” House Speaker Tim Moore put a little brighter gleam on it, calling it “very important … that we get that to the people to be able to vote on it.”

Sen. Brad Overcash (R-Gaston), grandly, told his colleagues: “The opportunity today is to empower the people of North Carolina to amend their own state constitution.” Buck Newton, Senate Republican from Wayne County, echoed Overstreet, declaring it “only fair that the citizens of this state … (be) given the opportunity to decide (this issue) for themselves.” You bet.

I’m certain that hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions, more North Carolinians would prefer to decide the crushingly concrete abortion issue for themselves than the imagined peril of non-citizen voting. Why not “empower” them? Isn’t it “only fair they decide.” Or do our Republican leaders merely use the referendum system to distort the democratic process, not to assure it? I fear we know what the answer to that question is.

Gene Nichol is Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law and in 2015 started the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund after the UNC Board of Governors closed the state-funded Poverty Center for publishing articles critical of the governor and General Assembly.

From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2024

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