Pro-choice forces are working to keep abortion legal in Michigan with a ballot initiative

Beth Morris is a 63-year-old homemaker whose pink Planned Parenthood shirt and clipboard would hardly betray her as a moderate Republican.

A mother of three adult children, Morris said she has donated to Planned Parenthood every year since college, when the organization helped her get a prescription for the pill. Now, she is part of a high-stakes drive to keep abortion legal in Michigan by putting the question to voters, when the right has never appeared more threatened.

A leaked supreme court draft opinion showed the court is on the precipice of reversing Roe v Wade, a landmark ruling that in 1973 invalidated dozens of state abortion bans, including in Michigan. Without the protections provided by Roe, a criminal abortion ban dating back to 1846 would reanimate, making abortion punishable by manslaughter in a state that 2.2 million women of reproductive age call home.

The coalition, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood and the Black women-led Michigan Voices, want voters to support a constitutional amendment to protect an expansion of reproductive rights, including but not limited to abortion.

Short of flipping the Republican-controlled Michigan house and senate, which would be a mighty feat as districts were gerrymandered to favor Republicans, the ballot initiative is the most direct way to protect abortion access. Right now, the focus of 25,000 volunteers is clear: to collect 425,059 signatures, thereby getting the measure on the ballot.

Whether this ballot initiative will become a national model remains an open question. Only 26 states have some form of direct democracy, and just 18 have a provision that allows citizens to initiate a constitutional amendment, according to Ballotpedia.

More than two-thirds of Americans support access to abortion under most or all circumstances. Criminal bans are a generally unpopular policy to which Republicans have tied themselves by zealously advocating against abortion. Other failed referendums to criminalize abortion, from South Dakota to Colorado to Mississippi, reveal possible electoral peril for Republicans.

Remarkably, this is the second time activists in Michigan have attempted to make abortion legal through a ballot initiative. The first came in 1972, the year before Roe v Wade.

Roe followed just a few months later in January 1973, and seemingly made the history of the first referendum moot. But Chelian, who had an illegal abortion herself at 15, is now worried history may repeat. A supreme court decision is expected in June, meaning abortion could be illegal in Michigan for several months before voters get their chance in November to vote on the ballot initiative.