Arizona, Nebraska voters to likely see abortion ballot measure during election

Arizona for Abortion Access on Wednesday said that it had submitted more than 823,000 signatures to the Arizona Secretary of State to put an abortion-related ballot measure before voters in November. The group only needed about 384,000 signatures to get the measure onto voters’ ballots, according to the secretary of state’s office. The deadline for submitting the signatures on all proposed ballot measures was 5 p.m. local time on Wednesday, the Arizona Secretary of State said.

What’s in this proposed ballot measure? The proposed ballot measure would enshrine into the state’s constitution a legal right for women to abort their unborn babies unless their unborn child reaches the stage of viability, where he or she is likely to survive independently outside the womb. Currently, unborn babies of a gestational age of about six months can usually survive outside the womb, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

What’s going on in Nebraska? The pro-abortion group Protect Our Rights on Wednesday said in a press conference it had submitted 207,000 signatures to the Nebraska Secretary of State to put an abortion-related ballot measure on the state’s November ballots. It needed to submit only about 123,000 signatures, or 10 percent of registered voters in the state, to get the measure onto the ballots. The organization said Wednesday was the last day it had to submit the signatures. Protect Our Rights’ ballot measure also included a constitutional amendment to give Nebraska women the legal right to abort their babies up until the point of fetal viability.

Dig deeper: Read Katelyn Walls Shelton’s column in WORLD Opinions about how a step-by-step campaign to protect unborn babies by slowly eliminating the practice of abortion will save as many lives as possible.