Host Brendan O'Connell invites Frank Pavone back to the show to review the states with abortion ballot measures.
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Life Matters
The following commentary does not necessarily reflect the views of the staff and management of WBCA or the Boston Neighborhood Network. If you would like to express another opinion, you can address your comments to Boston Neighborhood Network, 302-5 Washington Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02119. To arrange a time for your own commentary, you can call WBCA at 617-708-3215 or email radio at bnnmedia.org. Hello, welcome to Life Matters. I'm your host, Brendan O'Connell. Well in many states this election cycle, abortion is on the ballot. So people, besides voting for president and vice president, there are issues that a lot of them are constitutional amendments. And we have someone who has a keen insight to these, and he's been watching them closely, Frank Pavan. Welcome, Frank Pavan. Thanks, Brendan. Good to be with you. I want to run down the states, the 10 states, so we'll do it alphabetically, and maybe you can speak up Arizona. What's going on there with that measure? Yes, proposition 139 in Arizona. And this one has some of the most strong and direct language because it talks about a fundamental right to abortion. Now Brendan, something to understand about this is that that kind of language is not what the Supreme Court said about abortion throughout 50 years of Roe versus Wade. It didn't even go that far. So the Arizona Prop 139 actually goes farther than Roe v. Wade went. And what it does is it upends and basically shuns and dismisses 50 years of careful deliberation by the American people. We know abortion has been a divisive issue. But over these 50 years since Roe v. Wade, there have been some points of consensus that have emerged. And one of those points of consensus is that abortion is not a fundamental right. When you call something a fundamental right, like Arizona's proposition does, well then you're saying you cannot limit that right except for the most, most narrow of circumstances. The courts call it a you have to have a strict scrutiny if you pass a law, like a pro-life law. It's usually going to get struck down by the court if you're talking about limiting a fundamental right. And the reason I say that that's not what has happened is that over these 50 years and all of these amendments in these 10 states we're going to look at are saying that we're going to sweep away the consensus that the American people have had on points like, well you know, late-term abortion really should be limited, it shouldn't go up to birth. Well you know, if a minor gets an abortion, the parents really should be involved. Most states have parental involvement laws. Yeah, if you're going to have an abortion clinic, maybe it just ought to be a doctor who does the procedure and there should be health and safety regulations. Yeah, if abortion is going to be legal, that doesn't mean the taxpayers have to fund it. Yeah, if you've got doctors and nurses that don't want to be involved in abortion, maybe their conscience rights should be protected and they shouldn't be forced to get involved. These are all points of consensus that have emerged. These amendments, when you start calling like Arizona's proposal does, when you start calling abortion a fundamental right, then you're saying you're locking that state into a position far more radical than all the work of 50 years in state legislatures, state courts, federal courts, and the Supreme Court have deliberated and concluded that maybe abortion is not so fundamental or right as some might think. So that would be my comment on that. Arizona is a complicated state politically, it can go either way and unfortunately, you know, there's been a lot of pro-abortion support there. In fact, their legislature had to, they faced a lot of public pressure when the court there upheld an older law, after Roe v. A went away, the court there upheld an older law that was very, very, very strict in prohibiting abortion and the legislature realized, you know what, the voters aren't quite there at this point in time and so they repealed that law. So abortion has been really, really a hot topic this season, you know. Is the hurdle 50% or is it, yes, it is 50. Yes, in all 10, okay, so you got 10 states dealing with these amendments, right, in eight of those states, it's a 50% plus one threshold to pass these amendments, which really I think when you're talking about a constitutional amendment, it should be higher than that because of the far-reaching implications of a constitutional amendment. Everything else that the state does has to be in conformity with that. There should be a higher threshold, but be that as it may, that's what it is. In Colorado, which has one of these amendments, it's 55%, and here in Florida, it's actually 60% that is required before the citizen vote can amend the Constitution. Let's move on to Colorado, amendment 79, right to abortion initiative. What do you make of that? You know, again, they're using this language right to abortion, which not all of these amendments incorporate that, but not all of them say that explicitly, but now Colorado is an interesting situation because Abrendan, abortion in Colorado is already unlimited. They don't have any regulation or limitation on abortion. And so why would the other side want to introduce an amendment like this in Colorado? The reason is what we've said already. What they're trying to do is not just make abortion legal because they've already accomplished that in Colorado. What they're trying to do is to tie the hands of the people and their elected representatives from making it illegal in the future or even from regulating it. And the thing about Colorado's measure is that they're explicitly saying there has to be taxpayer funding of abortion. Now, all the amendments would put a burden on any law that, right now, protects our tax money from bank for abortion. But in Colorado, they're making it explicit. And they're saying, ah, we're going to have the right to abortion and to the funding of abortion. Well, I think, you know, I know, you know, that's one of the consensus points. Most Americans, even those who think abortion should be legal in some way, don't want to pay for it. They don't want to be forced to pay for someone else's abortion. So Colorado's really going off the rails in that respect with that Amendment 79. And then we move on to Florida, where you're living. Amendment 4, I had- You know, you know, you see in Amendment 4, you see especially the tactic of the other side to try to tap in to the conservative view that government should be limited. And that is a very valid view, government should be limited. Government should not do what the Democrat Party seems to want to do is decide what kind of car you're going to drive, what kind of stove you're going to use, and what kind of school you're going to send your child to. Government is not there to control our lives and make our decisions for us. It's there to just do some very, very basic things, preserve law and order and, you know, preserve our- preserve our freedom, our freedom. Now, so what the other side is doing very cleverly is to say, well, you know, this is a Florida Amendment 4 is saying limit government interference with abortion. But what it really ends up doing is it limits the people's ability to set abortion policy. And again, the language there, it says, oh, well, we're going to allow abortion up to viability. It doesn't define viability. But then it says the word or, and the word or is very consequential here because it sounds like it's only allowing it up to viability, which, of course, for most people is still too late. We protect babies in Florida starting at six weeks. But they're saying, oh, it should go up to, like, 24 weeks or so. But then it says or whenever the woman's health requires it. And health is not defined and it's so broad and it can be determined by, again, an undefined healthcare provider, which doesn't have to be a doctor, and you end up with essentially then a constitutional right to abortion up to birth. Most Floridians reject that. Most Americans reject that. Now, we have Maryland, question one, the right to reproductive freedom amendment. What do you make of that? Now look at that. Now, you notice a difference there in the wording. And this is true in Maryland and it's also true in Missouri. You have the right to reproductive freedom. Now, what that is, that's broader than what these other amendments are calling a right to abortion because it's reproductive freedom, including but not limited to abortion. So what does that mean? Well, transgender surgery, for example. And by the way, all of these amendments that we're looking at in all of these 10 states, one of them say, oh, an adult has the right to reproductive freedom. They say a person or an individual or some of them say, one, one has the right. And then the distinction I'm making here is between adults and minors. By saying person, by saying individual, by saying one, you're including children. So in Maryland, they're particularly concerned of, wasn't they're fighting this in Maryland or saying, listen, we're not making primarily abortion the issue, we're talking about parental rights here that a child could get trained, his or her gender and the Constitution guarantees their right to do that without even the parents being involved. That's a lot of the argument going on right now in Maryland where, again, when it comes to abortion, it's practically unlimited already. But they're trying to put this broader right to reproductive freedom, which is so dangerous because it can be an practically unlimited list of things that both adults and children can end up doing and claim a constitutional right to do. And are there commercials that differentiate that to the general public in Maryland? Yes. Absolutely. They're doing a great job in there in Maryland, you know, and the commercials, the advertisements. And you know, that website, I think we mentioned is stateballotmeasures.org. People can see what the pro-life side is doing in each of these states, the commercials they're putting out, people can share this on their social media, because I've put on that website the links to the different pro-life groups that are working hard in these states. Now, I've met Mary Rose Short, who's Katie Short's daughter. Oh, yes. And she has gone to Missouri to fight the battle the last 30 days before the election. What do you have to say about Missouri's Amendment 3? Yeah, Amendment 3 contains the same kinds of dangers, the same kinds of weaknesses here. They're talking about parental rights, they're talking about taxpayer funding. You know, Missouri has a lot of pro-life laws. This is a state that has been solidly pro-life. In fact, it's among the 14 states that protect the babies from conception. And one of the things they almost were able to do in Missouri, almost, there was a court challenge and it said, "Look, this is going to undo. This Amendment 3 would undo so many pro-life provisions that we think we ought to tell the voters point by point, give them a bullet list, of all the pro-life laws that are going to be overturned." Unfortunately, the court did not sustain that position, but it should have. And what we need to do, and what I know that what the pro-life groups in Missouri are doing, is working to pick up the slack on that, in other words, okay, if the court's not going to require it, at least we're going to do it. We're going to tell the citizens that all these hard-won, pro-life legal victories you've had over the years, these legislative victories, this Amendment threatens them all. And so let's at least tell the voters, honestly, the other side doesn't want to be honest. But let's at least tell the voters, honestly, what the implications of this Amendment are. Now, Montana, it says CL128, right to abortion initiative. What's that all about? Yes. Yes. So Montana is trying this. Now, interestingly, Montana was one of the states that had a ballot measure last time around in the midterms, in 2022, when a number of these states had these ballot measures. And that was not a constitutional amendment, that was a statute. It didn't pass, it was meant to be protecting babies born alive after abortion. But then the good news is that the legislature stepped in afterwards and they corrected that. And they did provide, by statute, legal protection for babies born alive. So now Montana is trying to go down this road again to a right to abortion. And again, you see the same dynamics, you see people's rights being threatened when it comes to parental involvement, clinic regulations, and all the other things we mentioned. How about taxation for- Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Tax payer money. Because again, people have to understand, you know, these amendments are talking about that in the Constitution, they're raising abortion up to the level of a fundamental right. And once you do that, it's very hard to limit it in any way, including forcing people to pay for it. Nebraska initiative 439, right to abortion initiative. What's going on there? Now, I was just in Nebraska, I was with the governor there, and we were at a big event and we were, you know, encouraging the voters. Nebraska has a unique situation. Where a pro-abortion amendment 439, as you just said, initiative 439, would give the right to abortion far beyond what it is now. Because right now, Nebraska prohibits abortion after 12 weeks. And the amendment would say, no, we're going to allow abortion beyond that. But they have a competing pro-life amendment that also made the ballot. So when the Nebraska voters go to the polls this year, they're going to see the pro-abortion amendment, and then they're going to see a pro-life amendment, which is 434. So you've got 439 battling with 434. And 434 says we are going to amend our Constitution to say that in the second and third trimester of pregnancy, abortion in Nebraska will not be allowed. So what that does is it puts in the Constitution the protection of the babies that they already have by statute in the first 12 weeks. So the way they're going to calculate it in Nebraska is that the measures to pass, they have to get at least 50% like we said before. But then let's say they both 434 and 439 both get more than 50%. And it's the one that gets the more votes that ends up winning. So the Nebraskaans have a very interesting situation we're going to see now what lessons we learn when you have a direct, because I think it will help voters think this through just a little bit more. When they see two different amendments on abortion, they're going to say, well, what's exactly, what's the difference between these? They're both about abortion. And it may cause them to think it through a little bit more than they're likely to think it through in the other nine states. Is there polling in Nebraska? See if 434 or 439 might, which one might be? Yeah. And it seems to be pretty neck and neck right now. It is. It is. It's pretty evenly divided. Yeah. Well, now we move to Proposal One, Equal Protection of Law Amendment. I'm sure Chris Slattery would be pretty angry about this. Oh, our friend Chris, yeah, we miss him, don't we? Yeah. You know, I'm from the, originally from New York, myself as well. What New York is doing is unique among these 10 states. They are talking, they are framing their argument, not like some of these measures we've seen talk about right to abortion, fundamental right to abortion, fundamental right to reproductive freedom. New York is taking a different approach and they're saying equality before the law. So equal protection under law is a basic American legal principle. And what New York is saying is it's adding to its constitution the several categories under the same rubric as that you can't deny people equality based on, you know, creed or nationality or race. They're adding things like gender expression, pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes. So instead of talking about a right to abortion, and now in New York, again, abortion is practically unlimited. They have some limitation in the final months of pregnancy. But the point is that practically unlimited already. But what they want to do is again, put it in the constitution and say because of equal protection under the law, you should have equal protection in terms of whatever outcome you want your pregnancy to have. So, so it right to abortion is included in that it's an immediate, immediate implication of that as well as the transgender surgery. So this again is where the arguments that our friends or pro-life friends in New York are using very much focus on warning parents that this is very bad for children because again, they could be told by a school counselor, oh yeah, you can go and get your transgender surgery. Your parents don't even have to know about it. You have a constitutional right, equality under the law. And again, it's a very dangerous amendment, very, very surrogacy included in that. Oh yeah, anything. That's the problem is that this language is so broad that you would include all of those things. Wow. And men in women's sports too. Oh my goodness. Nevada, question six, right to abortion initiative. What do you make of that and that's one of those states that's up in the air. Yes, that's, yeah, Nevada is again straight forward right to abortion. The very same implications of that that we've seen in these other states elevating abortion far beyond what Roe v. Wade did and threatening again, any action that the state would take. The tried and most reasonable restrictions on abortion, I mean, we're talking also about clinic safety regulations, you know, the Gosnell case in Philadelphia was, that came about what this man had, he's sitting in prison now for life. And he had such horrific conditions in his facility that were not dealt with by the state. Why? Because the pro-abortion administration of Governor Tom Ridge didn't want to inspect abortion clinics because they didn't want to interfere with the right to abortion. And so under that rubric, which Nevada, of course, is saying now in this amendment and these other ones too, under that rubric, the state could say we're not even going to inspect these abortion clinics, because we don't want to interfere with the right to abortion. And meanwhile, horrific things are happening in there, women are dying and unqualified people are running the medical procedures and got emergency medical equipment that they don't even know how to use and they're giving injections and whatnot. And to try, you know, most common sense people would say, well, you've got to try to, you know, protect people from that. You put a right to abortion in the constitution and it's like hands off and then people are even more in danger than they were before. And lastly, we have South Dakota, Christie Gnomes at the state, constitutional amendment G. Is she with us or against us? She's with us. In fact, I was with her just recently and we were talking about Amendment G and Christie is on our side a thousand percent. She's fighting hard as are the other pro-life groups out there. And you know, South Dakota has something unique about their amendment. They take the language of Roe v. Wade, remember when it divided the three trimesters and it said in the first trimester, the state may not interfere in the second trimester, you can have some regulations in the third trimester, well, you could even prohibit it if you want but not for health. Okay. So they lifted that language. Now, this is a section of Roe v. Wade, which is more of a legislative proposal than a constitutional decision. But that was the section of Roe v. Wade also that when Roe was challenged in 1992 by Planned Parenthood versus Casey, the Supreme Court rejected that language. They didn't support anymore that framework for deciding what the state could do. So in a sense, South Dakota is going backwards and they're taking up a construct that Roe v. Wade created out of thin air and they're trying to put it in their constitution. What does an interesting difference? In Roe v. Wade, if you read what the state can and cannot do in the first trimester of pregnancy about abortion, Roe v. Wade says it's the medical decision to be made by the woman's physician. Roe v. Wade says we do not agree that the abortion decision should be made by an individual for whatever reason she wants. We do not agree with that. Again, they don't consider it an absolute right. In the South Dakota language of Amendment G, you know what they did? They took out the word medical and they took out physician and they said it's the decision of the woman period. So this shows the extremism of these amendments and my goodness, I mean people just are, they're being hoodwinked. They are being deceived. This nice flowery talk about freedom, freedom, freedom, and meanwhile we are going into the most extreme position we possibly can on this most violent act of abortion. Well one final question, Andrew Sherville mentioned to me that a lot of the language is very fuzzy and you know they hide behind the language basically and you wonder what do they really mean by this and what do they mean by that? He said that's the case with the Florida Amendment 4-1. Go definitions. Yeah, I'm sorry? No definitions. They put these words in there and then they don't define them. Right, right. We just have a couple of minutes left. Any Senate races and Senate of course is extremely important and what do you make of some of those races in the Senate, US Senate? You know the math is very good for us, our side. We expect to pick up the Senate seats, the races in West Virginia and Montana. Now Nebraska is dangerously close. Anyone out there that's listening and you have influence in Nebraska, we got to get that Senate race to go our way and if we do, I mean it looks like we're going to take control of the Senate. It's very good but take nothing for granted, Pennsylvania, that Senate race is getting closer, Pennsylvania is very key both for the Senate and for the presidential race. So if people had to pick like one state where they said where can I you know invest my efforts in these final days, I'd say Pennsylvania and and Brendan also if I could say that the prayer effort that we have, I want to invite our viewers, I'm sure most of them are people of faith. Electionprayer.com is a prayer website we have. There's a daily devotional that we people can order, a different prayer will be sent to them each day by email who focuses on every different dimension and angle of these elections and these ballot measures, aside from all the knowledge, aside from all the you know reminding people get out and vote, let's increase our prayers for victory in these elections. Electionprayer.com. Well thank you very much Frank Pavone for your time today. We appreciate it on relative, relatively short notice and you're welcome anytime. And thank you. Folks we hope you enjoyed today's show and found it to be unique and formative, content rich, truthful and thought provoking. Thanks for watching and listening, my name is Brendan O'Connell, your friend for life. The following commentary does not necessarily reflect the views of the staff and management of WBCA or the Boston Neighborhood Network. If you would like to express another opinion, you can address your comments to Boston Neighborhood Network, 302-5 Washington Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02119. To arrange a time for your own commentary, you can call WBCA at 617-708-3215 or email radio at bnnmedia.org. (upbeat music)