Michigan voters will see abortion rights amendment on November ballots, state Supreme Court orders

Voters in Michigan will decide the future of their abortion care in November elections

Michigan’s Supreme Court has ruled in favour of abortion rights advocates demanding that a state constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion care appear on ballots this November.

The ruling on 8 September comes after Michigan advocacy group Reproductive Freedom for Fall submitted a petition in support with more than 750,000 signatures – above and beyond the threshold for getting the referendum on ballots this fall – but was shot down by two Republicans on a four-member state board because of a spacing issue.

In a filing on 1 September, Reproductive Freedom for All said the state’s Board of Canvassers “abandoned its clear legal duty” by rejecting the petition. The four-member panel deadlocked on the proposal on 31 August.

The state Supreme Court’s 5-2 decision on Thursday said the board has a “clear legal duty to certify the petition” and allow the question to appear on ballots this fall.

Michigan voters will decide whether “every person has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which involves the right to make and carry out decisions without political interference about all matters relating to pregnancy, including birth control, abortion, prenatal care, and childbirth.”

The measure would also “ensure that all Michiganders have the right to safe and respectful care during birthing, everyone has the right to use temporary or permanent birth control, everyone has the right to continue or end a pregnancy pre-viability, and no one can be punished for having a miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion.”

“The voters should be afforded the opportunity to make their voices heard at the polls,” according to the filing from Reproductive Freedom for Fall.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel also filed a brief in support of the groups’ appeal, arguing that the board’s decision “stripped the people of their right to amend their constitution”.

In her opinion, Michigan Chief Justice Bridget M McCormack lambasted the Board of Canvassers, noting that the more than 750,000 people who signed the petition is “more than have ever signed any proposal in Michigan’s history.”

“They would disenfranchise millions of Michiganders not because they believe the many thousands of Michiganders who signed the proposal were confused by it, but because they think they have identified a technicality that allows them to do so, a game of gotcha gone very bad. ... What a sad marker of the times.”

Last month, in America’s first referendum on abortion rights after the US Supreme Court revoked a constitutional right to abortion, a record number of Kansas voters turned out for an election to reject a Republican-drafted amendment that would strip abortion rights from the state’s constitution, sending a resounding message from a so-called “red state” reflecting the deep unpopularity of abortion restrictions.

Michigan’s Supreme Court ruling marks the second victory for abortion rights in the state this week, after a state judge moved to permanently block prosecutors from enforcing the state’s nearly century-old abortion ban.

On 7 September, Michigan Court of Claims Judge Elizabeth Gleicher granted a permanent injunction to block prosecutors from an “unconstitutional” anti-abortion law drafted in 1931, decades before the landmark Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade overturned state-level bans.

The law would ban abortion in nearly all instances except to protect the life of the patient.

“For 50 years, Michiganders have freely exercised the right to safely control their health and their reproductive destinies by deciding when and whether to carry a pregnancy to term,” Judge Gleicher wrote. “Eliminating abortion access will force pregnant women to forgo control of the integrity of their own bodies, regardless of the effect on their health and lives.”

At least 12 states have outlawed abortion entirely in nearly all instances in the weeks after the Supreme Court’s 24 June ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, forcing the closure of more than 40 clinics and denying access to care for millions of women and girls.