Arizona Will Vote on Abortion in November: Could That Give Democrats an Edge?

Arizona voters will decide in November whether to establish a right to abortion in the state constitution, a measure that could strongly influence turnout in a battleground state crucial to the presidential election and control of the Senate.

The Arizona secretary of state’s office said it had certified 577,971 signatures collected by a coalition of abortion rights groups, 50% more than required to put the constitutional amendment on the ballot in November. It is the largest number of certified signatures for any ballot measure in state history.

A similar question will appear on the ballot in Missouri, after the secretary of state there said Tuesday that abortion rights groups had collected 254,871 valid signatures, more than enough to place the measure on the ballot. Missouri, the first state to enact an abortion ban after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, could become the first state where a citizen-sponsored measure overturns a near-total ban.

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Abortion rights groups have prevailed in all seven states where the question of how to regulate abortion has been put directly to voters in the two years since the demise of Roe, the 1973 decision that said the U.S. Constitution protected a right to abortion.

The run of abortion rights successes has put Republicans and anti-abortion groups on the defensive. They have mounted “decline to sign” campaigns, filed lawsuits trying to prevent signatures from being certified and sponsored legislation trying to make it harder for ballot measures to pass. Before the high court overturned Roe, almost every abortion-related ballot measure had been sponsored by the anti-abortion side.

Measures to establish or protect abortion rights are already on the November ballot in six other states: Florida, South Dakota, Colorado, New York, Maryland and Nevada. But only Arizona and Nevada are seen as presidential battleground states, where Democrats are hoping support for abortion rights will drive higher turnout in their favor. (South Dakota and Missouri are the only two of those states with near-total abortion bans.)

Democrats have leveraged Americans’ unhappiness over the court’s decision to overturn Roe into gains in elections up and down the ballot over the last two years. The party’s support for reproductive rights has pulled in more young women in particular, a demographic that Democrats hope will prove influential in November. The Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Kamala Harris, has campaigned energetically on the issue.

Arizona is also crucial in the fight for control of the U.S. Senate. Ruben Gallego, a Democratic representative, is facing off against Kari Lake, the Republican nominee, for an open seat. In the House, where Republicans are trying to hold on to a narrow majority, Democrats are hoping the ballot measure, known as Proposition 139, will help them flip two seats in Arizona.

“This is a huge win for Arizona voters who will now get to vote yes on restoring and protecting the right to access abortion care, free from political interference, once and for all,” Cheryl Bruce, campaign manager for Arizona for Abortion Access, the coalition sponsoring the measure, said in a statement.

Joanna De La Cruz, a spokesperson for It Goes Too Far, a group opposing the amendment, said in a statement that proponents had overstated support for the measure: “This is a far fewer number of signatures than proponents originally touted.”

The group argues that the law in Arizona, which now allows abortion up until 15 weeks of pregnancy and for medical emergencies after that, “is settled” and that the amendment is “extreme.” Proponents, she said, “fail to tell voters that basic safety precautions now in place to protect girls and women will be unenforceable under the language of the amendment.”

The proposed amendments in Missouri and Arizona are similar to those that voters have approved in other states, including Michigan, another battleground state, and Ohio, which has a more conservative electorate. Each would establish a “fundamental right” to abortion, prohibiting the state from banning or limiting the procedure before viability, or when the fetus can survive outside the uterus — generally around 24 weeks of pregnancy — unless those limits are to protect the life of the patient and do not infringe on the pregnant woman’s “autonomous decision making.”

The states could regulate abortion after viability but would have to continue to allow the procedure in cases where, in the “good-faith judgment of a treating health care professional,” an abortion is necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant woman.

“It’s about giving Missourians the ability to make their own personal private health care decisions without interference from politicians,” Rachel Sweet, the campaign manager for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, said at a news conference after the signatures were certified.

While the Missouri ballot amendment is unlikely to have the national political ramifications that Arizona’s could, a win for abortion rights in Missouri would restore abortion access not only for the state, but also for women in the swath of nearby Southern states that have near-total abortion bans. “The impact will be regional,” said Mallory Schwarz, the executive director for Abortion Action Missouri.

But Stephanie Bell, a spokesperson for Missouri Stands With Women, an anti-abortion group, argued that the amendment would eliminate safety provisions, including the right to sue doctors for negligence during pregnancy, labor or delivery.

“Missourians are smart and they don’t like their freedom and safety being stolen from them, and once they learn the real truth about this amendment will vote it down,” she said in a statement.

Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who is Arizona’s secretary of state, noted as he certified the signatures that more legal challenges are inevitable. “It’s going to create a bunch of lawsuits, so that’s got to happen,” he said, just before affixing the seal of the state to the paperwork making the ballot measure official.

Still, the certifications will make it more difficult for opponents to remove the measures from ballots.

In Arizona, Republicans are betting that they, too, can use a ballot question to drive turnout in their favor. The Republican-led Legislature approved a measure that will ask voters to make it a state crime to unlawfully cross the border from Mexico, placing another hot-button issue directly before voters.

In a CBS News poll in May, 65% of likely Arizona voters said they would support a ballot measure establishing a constitutional right to abortion, while 21% said they would not, and 14% said they were unsure.

A St. Louis University poll of likely voters in Missouri in February found that a plurality of voters — 44% — supported the proposed ballot measure there, while 37% opposed, and 19% were unsure.

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