Lawmakers in the Michigan House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to remove a number of restrictions on abortion, a move which follows citizens approving a ballot measure to create a state constitutional right to obtain the lethal procedure.
Voters approved the “Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative” last fall by a substantial margin, establishing "the right to make and effectuate decisions” about pregnancy, abortion, and infertility. Lawmakers thereby introduced a series of bills collectively known as the “Reproductive Health Act” to codify that “every individual has a fundamental right to reproductive freedom.”
The series of legislation greenlit by the Michigan House would end a state ban on partial-birth abortion and make other amendments to statutes regulating abortion. Provisions to remove twenty-four-hour waiting period requirements and allow abortions funded by Medicaid were nixed from the bills after hesitation from Michigan Democratic State Representative Karen Whitsett. Various leftist organizations, including Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan and Michigan Coalition for Reproductive Liberation, released a statement condemning the failure to pass the provisions by means of the overall Reproductive Health Act.
“Voters have time and again sent a clear mandate to elected officials to take action to remove unnecessary restrictions on abortion access that only impose barriers to care,” the statement said. “Thanks to one Michigan House member’s foolhardy opposition to this critical legislation, this chamber just passed a watered-down version of the Reproductive Health Act that lacks key policy reforms that are both desperately needed and widely supported by voters.”
Justin Phillips, a pastor of Ekklesia Church in Grand Blanc, Michigan, said in comments to The Sentinel that Christians in the state must “live what we say we believe” amid the increasing legality of abortion.
“I think we need revival. We need to be crying out to God for mercy,” he remarked. “To love people being taken away to be slaughtered like Christ loved us by laying his life down. That we would not value our life or consider the things that we have to do as a higher priority than Christ and his call to pick up the cross and follow him.”
Michigan Democratic House Speaker Joe Tate meanwhile lauded the passage of the bills, contending that the legislation would “keep abortion accessible and affordable for generations.” The advancement of the abortion law rollbacks in the Michigan Legislature occur as several other states are poised to vote on enshrining the procedure within their state constitutions: voters in Ohio, another prominent swing state, could approve a similar ballot measure on Tuesday that would guarantee the purported right to abortion.
