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Tarb's avatar
Nov 4Edited

"In Montana, Amendment 128 had a comfortable 60-25 lead two weeks ago—even though the same poll shows voters support restricting abortion in at least some circumstances by a margin of 62-36! Yet they are voting for an amendment to prevent that!"

The poll says 36% say abortion should be completely legal, 9% completely illegal, and 53% "available in certain circumstances." The difficulty with interpreting a poll like this is that "available in certain circumstances" is an extremely wide category that includes everything from "totally fine up until the second before birth" to "illegal in every circumstance outside of when the woman is literally and undeniably about to die it's not done." So it's really hard to assess where the majority falls into. It'd be like doing a poll to ask people if they'd rather live in a democracy or dictatorship, and then trying to interpret from the (presumably high percentage for democracy) whether they'd prefer a congressional system or a parliamentary one.

Anyway, the text of the referendum is:

"CI-128 would amend the Montana Constitution to expressly provide a right to make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion. It would prohibit the government from denying or burdening the right to abortion before fetal viability. It would also prohibit the government from denying or burdening access to an abortion when a treating healthcare professional determines it is medically indicated to protect the pregnant patient’s life or health. CI-128 prevents the government from penalizing patients, healthcare providers, or anyone who assists someone in exercising their right to make and carry out voluntary decisions about their pregnancy."

This seems more or less a reinstatement of Casey, which would fit in with the "certain circumstances" category.

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Michael Blissenbach's avatar

James, West Virginia is voting Tuesday night on a ballot measure to constitutionally ban physician assisted suicide in their state constitution. Is there any polling out on whether that ballot measure is expected to pass?

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