PHOENIX (LifeSiteNews) – Pro-abortion activists failed to gather enough signatures by Thursday for a referendum that would ask Arizona voters to “enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution,” according to the Associated Press.
“A newly organized group of abortion rights supporters that filed an initiative in mid-May to protect the right to abortion fell way short of the approximately 356,000 needed signatures,” the wire service reported. “The effort by a group called Arizonans for Reproductive Freedom was a longshot, and while they collected about 2,700 per day that only totaled about 175,000. Initiative proponents often aim to collect at least an extra 30% over the minimum as a buffer.”
Abortion is currently illegal under a 1901 law that criminalizes the killing of preborn babies. The state never repealed the law, originally passed when it was a U.S. territory.
The pro-abortion group plans to try again in 2024.
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“This campaign will not stop until abortions are once again legal and accessible across Arizona,” Shasta McManus, the group’s treasurer, stated in a news release. “Since June 24, Arizona has been operating under a law written when the Civil War was still raging and Arizona was not yet a state. This is barbaric and unacceptable and underlines the urgency of this movement.”
Some outlets put the date of the law as 1864, when Arizona passed new laws as a territory, while other news outlets use 1901 as the date.
“This may have started from a moment, but it is growing into a lasting statewide movement,” Victoria Fewell, chair of the initiative stated in the news release from the group. She is an abortionist.
Liberal activists did succeed in placing a question on the ballot that would increase mail-in ballots and expand ballot harvesting.
Analysis by Ballotpedia concluded:
The initiative would rename the early voting list from the active early voting list to the permanent early voting list. Any voter on the early voting list is automatically sent an early ballot for any election at which they are eligible to vote. The initiative would repeal provisions providing for the removal of voters from the early voting list if they do not vote using an early ballot in all eligible elections for two consecutive election cycles and do not reply to a notice sent by election officials.
It would also remove criminal penalties for ballot-harvesting and expand drop boxes.
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“The initiative would allow a voter to give a voted early ballot to another person to deliver to the mail, polling place, or dropbox,” Ballotpedia explained. “It would repeal the existing law that makes it a felony to collect another person’s ballot. It would make it a felony to collect a ballot and intentionally fail to deliver it.”
Mail-in ballots and drop boxes have come under scrutiny for being targets for voter fraud. Both were expanded in the 2020 elections under the guise of COVID safety precautions.
An analysis from the Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity group, found that 15 million mailed ballots remained unaccounted for from the 2020 election.