letting the voters decide

California elections are coming up, and there are quite a few scary propositions out there for voters to give their opinions on. Unfortunately, the people who write these propositions seem so afraid of voters not agreeing with the propositions that they hide the true meanings of them behind moderate statements that have little to do with what the bills will actually accomplish. Among the worst of these is Proposition 73, which requires parental consent and notification for minors who choose to have an abortion. Though I personally think that even this requirement has many problems with it and at its worst will make life even more miserable for girls who come from violent or even sexually abusive families, I do understand that there are problably many conservative moderates out there (probably with a more optimistic view of the ability of all parents to rationally, maturely and non-violently support their pregnant daughters) who find this law to be quite reasonable.

Unfortunately, this law is hardly about parental consent. Hidden among all the legalese, this proposition redefinies abortion as "the death of an unborn child, a child conceived but not yet born" and threatens any doctor who performs an abortion on a minor with the potential of legal consequences if she ever changes her mind and claims "coercion".

These are huge legal leaps towards the full criminalization of abortion in California, the state which many everyday Americans seem to think will hold on to its state abortion rights even if the Supreme Court overturns RvW. To redefine abortion as the "death of an unborn child" is part of the 2 decade long campaign of the "christian" right to legally remove fetus from our vocabulary. Ironically, they hope to use the same legal reasoning that over-turned the Texas sodomy law two years ago to overturn RvW. The sodomy law was overturned on the argument that "the majority of americans" no longer view "sodomy" the way it was viewed when the law was written and do not think that it should be punishable by law. In the last twenty years, the "christian" right has been working very hard to introduce the term "unborn child" into the vocabulary of everyday Americans (believe it or not, "fetus" used to be the common term!) so that a similar argument could be made about roe v wade: that the majority of americans, as witnessed by new laws around the country, define abortion as the death of an unborn child, which is considered by most to be murder.

This reminds me of the time a few years ago when Washington State had a voter sponsored initiative that set all vehicle license fees to a flat $25 fee (rather than having it be based on the vehicle's cost). People loved the idea, and it passed with an overwhelming majority. Unfortunately, the initiative also had a small addition on it that said that the state legislature could never raise taxes again.

Isn't it lovely when people who can't be bothered to read legal documents go out and vote?