CV NEWS FEED // Arizona pro-lifers are urging citizens to “decline to sign” a pro-abortion ballot initiative that ultimately aims at enshrining abortion up to nine months in the state constitution.
The Decline to Sign Campaign is a grassroots effort spearheaded by a group of Catholics seeking to inform citizens about the extreme pro-abortion ballot initiative. The pro-abortion ballot initiative needs 383,923 signatures by July 3rd in order to put the Arizona Abortion Access Act on the ballot.
“We’re just trying to appeal to how drastic and radical this is,” Adrienne Johnson, one of the pro-lifers who started the campaign, told CatholicVote. “We’re finding more and more that just sharing simple, actual, truthful information is very, very helpful”
The team and volunteers are using a “four-pronged approach,” Johnson explained, “[including] prayer, social media, letters to pastors, and boots on the ground ‘Decline To Sign’ with successful messaging. We have weekly trainings, signs, and a website with information including the amendment, an affidavit to have one’s signature removed, and a contact form.”
The “boots on the ground” approach engages with potential signers and informs “them that this is an abortion up-to-birth constitutional amendment,” Johnson said.
Arizona already allows for abortions up to 15 weeks, but the constitutional amendment would extend that up to nine months if a “health care professional” determines an abortion “is necessary to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual.”
The Decline to Sign website slams the amendment for being “anti-woman in every sense including that it never uses the words woman, mother, or female but instead refers to moms as ‘individuals’.”
The Decline to Sign campaign is “[trying] to inform as many people as we possibly can and keep it off the ballot,” Johnson said, adding that historically, once a pro-abortion amendment is on a ballot, it is likely to pass.
The most dangerous aspect of the Arizona Abortion Access Act, Johnson said, is that it “states in the amendment, the words, ‘after fetal viability.’ So we know from that, that it would be in fact up-to-births, or all nine months.”
The full text of the pro-abortion amendment can be read here.
Johnson added that “there are other very serious repercussions to this amendment.”
For example, no parental knowledge or consent would be needed for a minor to get an abortion.
“All the protections for the baby and the mother would be taken away,” Johnson said, adding that the abortion “would not need to be done by a doctor or abortionist… [the amendment] just says the words ‘medical professional,’ [which could mean] over 20 different kinds of categories.”
Another repercussion is that the law would make Arizona a haven for sex traffickers. Arizona would become “a prime place for people to bring their victims,” Johnson said, calling such repercussions “horrific.”
Johnson highlighted that she is concerned that senior citizens are more likely to be deceived by the pro-abortion signature-gatherers.
“One of the tactics is to say, ‘you’re pro life. That’s great. You’re gonna want to sign this because it will put abortion on the ballot, and then it will fail. You will have defeated abortion in Arizona,’” Johnson explained. “So again, we’re just trying to educate people that [the ballot initiative is] not in any way shape or form a pro-life initiative at all.”
Johnson urged Catholics “to please join us in prayer,” especially praying “that the signature gathers will not be successful in gaining enough valid signatures… And of course, that we have a culture that respects life.”
She added that her team is relying on the Memorare prayer, which brings petitions to Mary, the Mother of God, and asks for her protection and help. They also are praying the Saint Michael prayer, and open their meetings with these prayers.
Johnson asked for “all Catholics to share this information with everybody they know,” adding that social media is an especially effective means of spreading the word.
For those who have already signed, Johnson said it is possible to get their names removed from the ballot initiative. Click here for more information.
