It’s Better Than Nothing. But It’s Worse Than Roe. Are We Ready for Bad Abortion Laws Pushed With Good Intentions?

In November, a political group in Arkansas announced it was pursuing a 2024 ballot measure to put a right to abortion in the state constitution. If successful, it would be a huge deal in a state with a total abortion ban.

But there’s one big catch: The proposal would offer less protection than Americans had before Roe v. Wade was overturned, because it would codify abortion only through 18 weeks of pregnancy, with limited exceptions. The previous standard had been about 24 weeks.

The move immediately drew criticism online, but established reproductive rights groups have yet to criticize it publicly because, frankly, it’s complicated. There’s been a lot of spirited debate in the reproductive rights movement about a related quandary: Should states looking to get abortion rights into their constitutions do so according to the previous standard of allowing abortion access until “viability,” the point when a fetus could technically survive outside of the uterus, which is typically 24 weeks? Or—because the past few decades have shown that 24 weeks is a flawed, arbitrary line—should reproductive rights advocates working at the state level be pushing for unfettered abortion access instead?

So this proposal out of Arkansas—which would enshrine weaker rights than the ones lost in 2022—came as a big surprise and, to some working in the movement, it was a cowardly choice. It was better than what Arkansas residents had at the moment, sure. But was endorsing it its own kind of defeat?

The proposal came from the democracy nonprofit For AR People, which formed a ballot question committee called Arkansans for Limited Government, or AFLG. Gennie Diaz, the group’s executive director, said the organization jumped into action after it saw internal polling that showed 51 percent of Arkansas supported a limited right to abortion. Diaz said the poll, which she could not share publicly, showed that “61 percent of Arkansans either think that abortion should be legal in some circumstances, or that’s just none of the government’s business.”

Diaz said the nonprofit chose to advocate for abortions up to 18 weeks instead of until viability because it wanted to speak to those 51 to 61 percent of Arkansans. And that particular gestation marker of 18 weeks, which she said was a “reasonable, sensible cutoff,” had polling support, whereas people didn’t know what viability meant. “When you get to a specific week, people go, ‘I know what that means.’ [They] can say ‘yeah, that’s appropriate up until this point in time,’ ” Diaz said. “After that [they say], ‘Hmm, I don’t feel good about that.’ ”

AFLG’s messaging on this ballot initiative is about preventing government involvement in medical decisions, yet their proposal would very clearly allow the state to ban abortion after 18 weeks. When pressed about the apparent contradiction here, Diaz said, “It’s threading the needle with Arkansas voters on what they view as limited government.” She said: “It’s not meant to be a parlor trick,” but rather an invitation for people who consider themselves pro-life to support the measure so it can pass. “Honestly, it’s not palatable to either end of the spectrum, and that’s intentional,” she said.

Still, some pollsters think that AFLG is jumping to conclusions about how voters really feel about abortion.

Tresa Undem, the co-founder of PerryUndem, a nonpartisan polling firm, has been tracking opinion on abortion for 20 years. She said that........

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