With all eyes on this November’s elections for president and Congress, voters risk losing sight of the pivotal battlegrounds where the issue of protecting — or sacrificing — innocent life is on the ballot nationwide. Voters in 10 states will vote on 11 ballot initiatives, nearly all of which would open the door to expanding the taking of innocent life as late as the third trimester.

Voters this November will decide on abortion-related ballot initiatives in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, and South Dakota.

“Americans will be going to the polls to vote on the issue of life. They’ll be voting on whether or not to protect life in their state constitutions and in their state laws,” Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told the 2024 Pray Vote Stand Summit (PVSS) in Washington, D.C., last Friday. “We’re so thankful that they finally have the chance to do so — that the Supreme Court has finally recognized that Roe was wrongly decided, that Roe was an abomination in the Constitution, that now the issue of life again belongs to the people and their elected representatives.”

Experts at Family Research Center have compiled the facts about these post-Dobbs state abortion initiatives into a new document titled “Life on the Ballot.” The resource briefly records the language that will appear on the ballot, as well as how each measure would impact state law, mothers, and unborn babies if they take effect.

One initiative would lay down a state marker against late-term abortion. If adopted, Nebraska Initiative 434 would protect children from abortion in the second or third trimesters, except those conceived in rape or incest, or when required by “medical emergency.”

Nine of the 10 remaining pro-abortion initiatives would extend abortion until birth in their state constitutions, often with deceptive-sounding language. Confusingly, Nebraska voters will also decide on Initiative 439, which would establish a fundamental right to abortion until viability — but an abortionist could carry out an abortion after that point (generally considered 22 weeks) to protect the “health” of the mother. Nevada Question 6 also creates the right to an abortion carried out by a “healthcare professional until fetal viability or when necessary to protect the health” of the mother.

As during the days when Roe v. Wade and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, were in effect, the term “health” can be interpreted broadly, to include everything from imminent death to financial harms. Nevada’s language could also allow non-doctors to carry out abortions, reducing the abortion industry’s costs — and lowering the quality of care received by mothers.

Many other initiatives strip out existing protections for mothers and their children. Arizona’s Proposition 139 would create a fundamental “right” to abortion under the state constitution. Under its terms, “All current laws protecting unborn children in Arizona would be removed, including the law protecting unborn children from abortion after 15 weeks. This means dismemberment abortions during the ninth month of pregnancy would be legal,” explains the FRC document. It could force taxpayers to fund abortion, it authorizes non-doctors to carry out abortions, and it could increase abortion trafficking (allowing abusers to take their victims to the abortionist to dispose of the evidence of rape, incest, or sexual exploitation).

The proliferation of the abortion pill, mifepristone, has already allowed men to force women into unwanted abortions for at least 24 years. One of those victims shared her story with a PVSS panel on the right to life moderated by Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at FRC.

Catherine Herring’s husband, Mason, repeatedly deceived her into ingesting abortion pills to abort their child in April 2022. “I continued getting sick the rest of the day, ended up in the emergency room and was bleeding heavily,” she remembered. Thankfully, she heard of the abortion pill reversal protocol and was told to take progesterone. “I think, it truly saved my daughter’s life,” Herring said. “Josephine is two years old now,” and “the cutest thing you’ve ever seen.”

But after fighting for her daughter’s life, she had to fight for justice.

“One of the most shocking things about my story, is even being from the state of Texas, you might be interested to know the charges for my husband,” she told the PVSS crowd. “He was sentenced to 180 days in jail. That’s it for seven attempts to end our daughter’s life.”

Thanks to the state’s outdated laws, she had to lead a fight to “criminalize poisoning people,” Herring said. “Can you imagine that we’re even having to say that?”

Some of the ballot initiatives could remove protections for women in similar positions, experts say. And they could compromise other individuals’ rights, as well. Colorado’s Amendment 79 allows abortion-on-demand until birth, opens the door to taxpayer-funding of abortions, and threatens the conscience rights of Christians and other pro-life religious believers. It needs 55% support to pass this November.

Montana’s CI-128 would allow abortion until viability, with exception for the “health” of the mother. It would also hold that the state cannot punish “patients, healthcare providers, or anyone who assists someone in exercising their right to make and carry out voluntary decisions about their pregnancy.” Florida’s controversial Amendment 4 would allow abortion until viability, with broad exceptions afterwards, in the process striking down the state’s heartbeat law and a law protecting children from abortion to prevent fetal pain, beginning at 15 weeks. It would also erase parental consent or notification laws.

Some initiatives have vague and indistinct language that could legalize “reproductive” measures far exceeding abortion. Maryland’s Question 1 would authorize a constitutional amendment codifying the right to “reproductive freedom, including but not limited to” pregnancy-related decisions. Similarly, Missouri’s Amendment 3 would “establish a right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion and contraceptives.” Missouri’s amendment also says it allows regulation after viability, with a broad exception for the alleged “health” of the mother.

The inexact “reproductive freedom” language of these two amendments sounds similar to Ohio’s Issue 1, which passed last November. It stated, “Every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to” abortion. Just weeks after the election, Ohio Democrats introduced the so-called “Reproductive Care Act” (H.B. 343), which stated that “reproductive health care … means gender affirming care.” 

Experts say the ballot initiatives could compromise women’s safety in another way: The Missouri amendment forces pregnancy resource centers to refer mothers to abortion facilities and eliminates ultrasound requirements, according to the new FRC resource.

Pro-life women’s centers already find themselves in the crosshairs, as vandals spraypainted or firebombed numerous such facilities after the unprecedented leak of the Dobbs decision in May 2022.

“If the right person doesn’t get into office, this is going to escalate, not just for us, but the thousands of Christian faith-based pregnancy centers across this country who do nothing more than to help a woman, whether she’s rich or poor, who is wondering about what she’s going to do,” noted Janet Durig, executive director of the Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center, which was vandalized after the leak of the decision. Imagine a woman whose “boyfriend left her when he found out she thought she was pregnant. Who’s going to help her? How is she going to be?” she asked.

In light of the potential worsening of pro-life centers’ lot under measures such as this, Durig encouraged pro-life advocates to “support pregnancy centers in your community” and “stand behind them, because the battle would be great.”

Pro-life centers have come under fire in New York, where Proposal 1 would further ban “unequal treatment based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, and sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity and pregnancy.” It also protects against “unequal treatment” based on “reproductive healthcare and autonomy.”

South Dakota’s Amendment G would reinstate something akin to the Roe v. Wade arrangement, which claimed tens of millions of babies since 1973.

Senator Hawley, who gave an impassioned plea for the Republican Party to “boldly and unashamedly” proclaim that “there is no right more important than the right to life,” said the post-Dobbs environment means Americans face opportunities to protect — or destroy — life in all 50 states.

This decade will be remembered as “a time when our most foundational beliefs — the right to life and liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the right to conscience, the right to worship the Lord as he calls us — were at stake,” Hawley contended.