Republicans Are Launching Last-Minute Attempts To Keep Abortion Off The Ballot

When Donald Trump attempts to defend his unpopular but ever-changing stance on abortion, he never fails to come back to his safest talking point: He allowed the states to decide how to regulate abortion.

He presents it as a shining example of simply letting democracy flourish. “It’s the vote of the people now,” he said during the presidential debate on Tuesday. “It’s not tied up in the federal government. I did a great service in doing it.”

But in three states with critical abortion rights measures on the ballot in November, Republicans are engaged in a dedicated campaign to strip voters of that choice. Conservatives are making last-ditch court efforts in Florida, Missouri and Nebraska to remove abortion rights questions from the ballot, using either government intimidation or far-fetched legal theories.

Desperate attempts to keep abortion off the ballot signal just how popular pro-choice policies are. Recent pollingin all three states showsthat a majority of voters would support their state’s abortion rights amendment.

In Florida, for example, anti-abortion Republicans have weaponized a supposed nonpartisan government agency to spread misinformation and have launched an unprecedented investigation into thousands of already-verified petition signatures under the guise of voter fraud. And this is all happening less than two months before Election Day.

“I could have just said, ‘You know what, it’s on the ballot, people can decide, let the chips fall where they may.’ But that’s not the right thing to do,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ® said this week at a Tallahassee megachurch where he rallied conservative Christian groups to vote against the state’s pro-choice amendment. The amendment would restore abortion access until