Yesterday, voters in Albuquerque, New Mexico stood up for women and families, turning out in force to defeat a proposed ban on abortion after 20 weeks by a 10 point margin. Time and again, we’ve seen women and families raise their voices to oppose harmful restrictions on a woman’s ability to make her own decisions about whether to continue a pregnancy. In Texas, the people’s veto (when thousands of activists in the Senate gallery yelled that they didn’t want abortion restrictions and) temporarily halted the harmful abortion ban that we continue to fight in court. In Mississippi, voters decisively defeated a so-called personhood measure that would have banned abortion. The people have voted down abortion bans and restrictions around the country from Colorado to South Dakota to Florida. It’s clear that a majority of Americans agree that the decision to end a pregnancy belongs with a woman, her family, and her doctor.
But the extreme anti-abortion groups behind these restrictions just don’t seem to get the message, despite the fact that time and again, voters say loud and clear: These abortion bans have no place in our cities and states. We trust women to make personal, private medical decisions without unnecessary government intrusion.
The ACLU will continue to fight attacks on women’s health and build on last night’s victory. Let yesterday’s vote serve as a reminder – We’re not stupid. We know these restrictions are part of a coordinated, nationwide attempt to ban abortion state by state, city by state, clinic by clinic. And we will be heard when we say that enough is enough. Politics has no place in our decisions about whether and when to have a family.
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