If anti-abortion groups are successful in gathering enough signatures to qualify a petition to ban partial-birth abortions in Maine; if they persuade the Legislature to send the question to the public; and if they wage a successful political campaign next fall and get the question passed, they will have accomplished nothing.

Nothing may be too strong a word, because certainly during the next six months the leaders of this political campaign will accomplish things like getting their names in the newspaper and their faces on television. They will embroil the state in an emotional subject without enlightening it. They will raise money for their organizations.

But on the issue of reducing the number of abortions, nothing will be accomplished. Nothing will be accomplished because their question is unconstitutional. The petition clearly disregards the health of a mother in determining whether she would be allowed a late-term abortion. In fact, it goes further than that in limiting the types of threats to her life that would grant her an exception to the proposed abortion ban. The court has upheld the idea that the health of a mother, determined individually by a physician, should decide whether a woman may choose a late-term abortion. Members of Congress raised this same issue last session in arguing against a measure similar to the Maine petition question.

However far the authors of the question intended the prohibition to go, it is clear that it could be interpreted to include a procedure that could be done on a pre-viable fetus, a ban which both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruled was impermissible. The very vagueness of the nonmedical language it uses to prohibit abortion procedures, in fact, fails to inform physicians what they could or could not do and is reason enough to void the question.

Twenty-two years ago the Supreme Court in its Danforth decision ruled that states must leave the choice of abortion method to the physician. Since then, 17 states have passed laws with procedure bans similar to the petition question introduced in Maine this week. In every state where the law has been challenged, it has been thrown out by the court or has yet to be decided. The leaders of the Maine campaign know this, but don’t seem to care.

Their petition is about something other than banning a late-term abortion procedure in a state where the abortion rate is half the national average and that had only two third-trimester abortions between 1984 and 1996. The campaign is about telling doctors who perform abortions that they may not take certain steps, even if these procedures are in the best interests of their patients. It is about misusing Maine’s referendum process to try to erode a constitutional right that the Supreme Court has recognized and reaffirmed. And it is about putting pressure on Maine’s pro-choice U.S. senators to switch their votes on federal legislation.

Meaningless debate

Maine, at the court’s urging, has allowed citizen initiatives that have even the slightest chance of passing constitutional muster to proceed, but this question has been struck down so often in elsewhere that it would have been understandable if the Secretary of State’s Office hesitated to allow it here. But now Maine is likely to endure a debate the will be as meaningless as it will be loud. This should not be acceptable.

Anti-abortion advocates have used every tactic imaginable to keep women from choosing abortions. They have scared (or worse) patients away from clinics. They have harrassed doctors to the point that few new physicians want to be even trained in abortion procedures. They have tied up legislatures in utter disregard of the Constitution. And they have been effective. Not in challenging the legal right a woman has to make this choice but in denying that right to an increasing number of women.

Roe v. Wade gained acceptance 25 years ago because enough people knew of friends, neighbors and sisters who had become sterile or died through mishandled illegal abortions. Taking away or infringing on the right to an abortion does not reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. Instead, it produces the double tragedy of an aborted fetus and a maimed or dead woman.

The agenda behind this petition is cynical in its calculations to prey on the emotions of voters and cruel in its outcome. Worst of all, it has nothing to do with reducing the number of abortions in Maine and everything to do with political gain.