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Group plans new anti-abortion petition in Nevada
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LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL CAPITAL BUREAU
CARSON CITY -- The Nevada Pro-Life Coalition has withdrawn an anti-abortion petition heavily amended by a district judge and now plans to circulate a new petition, said Michael Peters, the coalition secretary and lawyer.
"It will be a pro-life petition," Peters said Friday. "We feel it is the right thing to do."
Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the coalition's original petition. District Judge James Wilson decided Dec. 18 that the petition could be circulated, but he edited the petition's 200-word description.
Wilson inserted language that states passage of the petition would affect women's right to use the pill for birth control and would prevent abortions in cases of rape, incest or even when a woman's health is jeopardized by a pregnancy.
To win a place on the November ballot, organizations that circulate petitions must secure 72,352 signatures of valid voters by June 19. Voters then would have to approve them both during the general election in November and again in 2014.
Even then, abortions would continue unless the U.S. Supreme Court reverses its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision allowing abortion.
Elisa Cafferata, chief executive officer of Nevada Advocates for Planned Parenthood Affiliates, said her organization and the ACLU would examine the new petition and decide whether it clearly tells voters of its intentions. If it doesn't, then they will challenge its language in court.
"We are concerned that if they get on the ballot that they make sure people know the real ramifications," she said.
The Pro-Life Coalition itself "essentially conceded" in its withdrawn petition that passage would affect women's right to use birth control, said Cafferata, noting it did not respond to an affidavit from a doctor saying that passage would lead to a prohibition on birth control.
"I am not sure how they can write a petition that says it doesn't," she said.
With the withdrawal of the Pro-Life Coalition petition, no anti-abortion petitions now are being circulated in Nevada.
In December Wilson also decided that another anti-abortion petition, this one from the Personhood Nevada group, was so vague and misleading that voters would not understand its intentions if they were asked to sign the petition. He refused to allow the group to circulate the petition among voters.
To this point, Personhood has not appealed Wilson's decision to the Supreme Court. Its leaders failed to return calls Friday.
An appeal, however, could be futile since several months would pass before the Supreme Court could hear the case. Even if the court ruled for Personhood, it would have little time to gather signatures before the June 19 deadline.
The Pro-Life Coalition also will not have much time to collect signatures if it submits a new anti-abortion petition.
Under state law, critics like Planned Parenthood once again could go to District Court to challenge the description of effect. If they do not prevail in that court, then they could appeal to the state Supreme Court.
"The time frame is pretty tight," Cafferata said.
In part because of legal challenges to the wording of petitions, no citizens group has been able to collect enough signatures to place a petition before voters since the 2006 election. That year voters approved petitions that outlawed the use of tobacco in most bars, raised the minimum wage and defeated a move to legalize marijuana.
Personhood Nevada is part of a national religious-based organization that has been trying for the last two years to secure support for anti-abortion petitions. Its efforts have failed in Colorado and Mississippi.
Contact Capital Bureau Chief Ed Vogel at evogel@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3900.
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Still waiting for an answer....
Why? Do we want unwanted kids running around? Do they generally become good adults when their parents didn't want them, and can't afford them? Seriously, why? So Metro can have target practice in a few years? Asinine.
How long will it be until the right to lifer's claim that unless every egg or sperm is used with the intent of fertilization that its a crime?
They typically point to religion as their basis for their beliefs. The bibles I've read state that free will is gods gift and that everyone will be judged by how they use that gift. It makes you wonder why they try and impose their will affect others' free will.
The pro-war and pro-death penalty right to life wackos have come out of the woodwork again. If a fertilized egg split two times does not make it on its implant journey, are you going to bury this "life" form? What are you going to bury it in? a "nano coffin?" These people do not know how the reproductive system works or birth control (which they are against as well.)
Haven't these people heard of Question 7, which enshrined into Nevada law the Roe vs. Wade decision? Groups like "Nevada Pro-life" forced the issue in 1990 and lost badly (almost 2-1) when they were expecting to win by that much. Don't they have to first undo Question 7 by a vote of at least the same percentages? Today, 20 years later, these things aren't even passing in Mississippi. But, let's encourage the religious fanatics to spend their time on lost causes like this and keep their noses out of our personal lives.
Live your life the way you wish and leave everyone else to do the same !
To win a place on the November ballot, organizations that circulate petitions must secure 72,352 signatures of valid voters by June 19.
It would take a lot fewer signatures than that to certify a RECALL petition against this activist judge.
That'll send the guy (and others like him) a pretty strong message.
Article 19 §2.1: the people reserve to themselves the power to propose, by initiative petition, statutes and amendments to statutes and amendments to this Constitution, and to enact or reject them at the polls.
The petition process was instituted to bypass the special interest dominated Legislature.
The petition process was instituted to bypass the special interest dominated Judiciary.
The Courts have NO authority to preemptively toss or rewrite a petition for a constitutional amendment. It is the job of the voters to affirm/reject such ballot questions ON ELECTION DAY.
Government BY the lawyers, FOR the lawyers.
Who is going to take care of all the extra unwanted babies, the ones that want to outlaw abortion? I think not. If they want to outlaw abortion then who is going to bury all the women and girls that get back room abortions, the ones that want to outlaw legal abortions, I think not. Keep you hands off of me and mine. If I want to get 20 abortions, it should be up to me, not them.