Pro-Lifers Lament Several Disappointing State Ballot Initiative Results
by Jenni Parker an Allie Martin
November 8, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Sanctity-of-life issues had a bad day at the ballot box during yesterday's national elections. Today pro-life advocates are expressing sorrow and disappointment over the defeat of pro-life ballot initiatives in South Dakota, California, and Oregon, and the passage of a pro-cloning amendment in Missouri.In South Dakota, voters turned down an act that would have upheld that state's abortion ban, thus prohibiting all medical and surgical abortions in the state. However, according to Associated Press reports this morning (with 99 percent of the state's precincts reporting), 56 percent of the electorate voted against the measure, with only 44 percent casting ballots in favor of it.
Meanwhile, in California and Oregon, voters rejected measures requiring parental notification and a waiting period before abortions can be performed on underage girls. Early returns in both states showed the measure being turned down by 54 percent of the voters, with 46 percent voting for it.
And in Missouri, with 98 percent of the votes counted, the stem-cell research measure known as Amendment 2 appears to have passed. The amendment, which outlaws "reproductive cloning" but permits "somatic cell nuclear transfer," was narrowly approved by voters (51 to 49 percent).
Opponents of the measure, however, argue that "somatic cell nuclear transfer" is cloning and that Amendment 2 does allow that ethically controversial process for scientific research purposes, while prohibiting only the implantation of cloned embryos in a woman's body.
Some critics of Missouri's stem-cell research amendment say its proponents intentionally used lengthy written explanations and complex scientific language to confuse voters about the nature of what was essentially a pro-cloning measure. According to one conservative commentator's pre-election post on FreeRepublic.com, "Amendment 2 is '2 tricky.' And the human-cloning 'bait and switch' is just the beginning."
Pro-Life Sorrow Over South Dakota's Failed Abortion Ban
The outcome of the South Dakota vote on Referred Law 6, the Women's Health and Human Protection Act, was a particularly painful blow to pro-lifers, including many who have personally experienced the devastation abortion causes in the lives of women and others. Caron Strong is national director of Operation Outcry, a Justice Foundation project that seeks to end legalized abortion by mobilizing women who have had abortions to expose the truth about the pervasive harm that procedure causes, far beyond its destruction of the innocent lives of preborn children.
"As women who have been hurt by abortion," Strong notes, "we are disappointed that the voters ... were misled by the rhetoric involving the rape and incest provision in the law and failed to support South Dakota's ban on abortion." The Operation Outcry spokeswoman says it is clear from the evidence and from speaking to women who have had abortions that abortion hurts women. She and other women involved with the project know from their own abortion experiences that "women need help in vulnerable pregnancies," she says, "not the empty promise of a quick fix."
Unfortunately, Strong points out, she and other women who are part of Operation Outcry know all too well that the "quick fix" of abortion "ultimately brings deep grief and suffering as well as detrimental physical effects." The Justice Foundation has collected massive amounts of evidence of the health-threatening and often life-threatening impact of abortion on women, including suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts, drug and alcohol abuse, promiscuity, relationship problems, and many other psychological effects.
Judie Brown of American Life League (ALL) says her group is also extremely disappointed that many South Dakota citizens made the "tragic decision" to vote down the Women's Health and Human Protection Act. She says people of faith and conscience worked hard to "combat the manipulative propaganda" from abortion proponents nationwide, but pro-lifers' efforts fell short of the goal as Planned Parenthood and other abortion supporters did all in their power to eradicate the South Dakota abortion law.
"The proponents of death poured millions of dollars into the state," Brown notes. They "decried the pro-life law as being callous toward women and did all they could to convince the electorate that abortion is a good rather than an evil," she says.
Although that "deceitful effort," succeeded on November 7, ALL's president insists "it will be a victory short-lived." She says pro-life leaders in South Dakota have made it their goal to see the Women's Health and Human Protection Act become part of the legal framework that defines their state as a safe place to live.
Actually, Brown contends, the very fact that pro-lifers came so close to getting the law approved "should tell naysayers that there is indeed hope that such a ban will be enacted -- not today, but certainly soon." ALL is urging pro-lifers in South Dakota to start drafting new legislation immediately to begin the process of a renewed effort to ban abortion throughout the state.
Now that the November 7 elections are over, ALL vice president Jim Sedlak says efforts to educate Americans about pro-life issues will increase. "We need to renew our efforts," he says. "We need to get our message out and to educate the American people on the sanctity of life in the womb from fertilization on."
Part of that education process, the ALL official adds, is reminding individuals that embryos are people. "[W]e all started out as embryos -- and there is no baby who should ever be killed in the womb," he says.
Still, Sedlak points out, the public's lack of awareness and the dearth of truthful information about sanctity-of-life issues are not the toughest obstacles pro-lifers face. The true enemy in the battle to end abortion in America, he asserts, is Planned Parenthood, an organization that makes hundreds of millions of dollars by offering abortions at its clinics across the country.
