Washington voters want a state constitutional amendment to protect reproductive freedom

Last week, the right wing con­trolled Alito/Roberts Court gut­ted almost fifty years of prece­dent and stripped away a fed­er­al­ly-rec­og­nized right to repro­duc­tive free­dom and auton­o­my when it over­turned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jack­son Wom­en’s Health Orga­ni­za­tion, No. 19–1392.

It’s eas­i­ly one of the worst Supreme Court deci­sions ever, and it will exac­er­bate the already alarm­ing prob­lem of inequity in access to repro­duc­tive healthcare.

But even in states where abor­tion care remains legal to obtain — like Wash­ing­ton — the specter of fur­ther assaults on repro­duc­tive free­dom remains.

Repub­li­cans like Mike Pence want a nation­al abor­tion ban and they will like­ly be in a posi­tion to get one if Repub­li­cans regain a tri­fec­ta at the fed­er­al lev­el (there are very few pro-lib­er­ty Repub­li­cans left in either the House or the Senate).

Wash­ing­ton State has vot­er-approved laws on the books con­cern­ing access to repro­duc­tive care which have with­stood attacks from the right wing for decades.

How­ev­er, Wash­ing­to­ni­ans would unques­tion­ably be bet­ter pro­tect­ed from the threat of a nation­al abor­tion ban and oth­er bad exter­nal leg­is­la­tion if our state Con­sti­tu­tion were amend­ed to explic­it­ly pro­tect repro­duc­tive freedom.

Antic­i­pat­ing that the Dobbs deci­sion was com­ing, we decid­ed at the begin­ning of this month to ask vot­ers about their views on this subject.

We found 63% of like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers inter­viewed June 1st-2nd, 2022 sup­port­ive of a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to defend repro­duc­tive free­dom, with only 28% opposed. 8% said they were not sure.

Remark­ably, 57% said they were strong­ly sup­port­ive, with anoth­er 6% some­what sup­port­ive. A mere 21% were strong­ly opposed, with 7% some­what opposed.

Here’s the com­plete ques­tion we asked and the respons­es we received:

QUESTION: Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose, or strong­ly oppose amend­ing the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion to pro­tect Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ free­dom to obtain repro­duc­tive health­care, includ­ing abor­tion care?

ANSWERS:

• Sup­port: 63% 
  • Strong­ly: 57%
  • Some­what: 6%
• Oppose: 28%
  • Some­what: 7%
  • Strong­ly: 21%
• Not sure: 8%

Our sur­vey of 1,039 like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Wednes­day, June 1st through Thurs­day, June 2nd, 2022.

It uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (50%) and text mes­sage answers from cell phone only respon­dents (50%).

The poll was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.0% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

More infor­ma­tion about the survey’s method­ol­o­gy is avail­able here.

85% of respon­dents fell into one of the “strong­ly” camps, demon­strat­ing that peo­ple have firm posi­tions on this issue. Note that more than twice as many peo­ple are strong­ly sup­port­ive of the idea than strong­ly opposed.

This find­ing rein­forces that Wash­ing­ton is a state where peo­ple tru­ly val­ue and cher­ish repro­duc­tive rights. They are part of a val­ues sys­tem here that tran­scends par­ty and even ide­ol­o­gy. That much is evi­dent from the crosstabs.

We found sup­port for a pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments in all regions, includ­ing East­ern and Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton, where there is major­i­ty support.

Near­ly all Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers want an amend­ment (88%), but so do a major­i­ty of inde­pen­dent vot­ers (56%). Even Repub­li­can sup­port for this idea is in the dou­ble dig­its (23%), which is sig­nif­i­cant con­sid­er­ing how far to the right the Repub­li­can Par­ty has shift­ed in recent years, with the Dan Evans wing going almost extinct.

Con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments require a two-thirds vote of both cham­bers of the Leg­is­la­ture in Wash­ing­ton to be referred to the peo­ple for a pub­lic vote.

It is not pos­si­ble to pro­pose a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment by peti­tion here like it is in oth­er states. That is by design — the founders want­ed to pro­tect both major­i­ty rule and minor­i­ty rights, so they wrote a Con­sti­tu­tion that explic­it­ly requires major­i­ty votes to pass bills (no more, no less) but minor­i­ty con­sent to change the plan of gov­ern­ment. For every state rep­re­sen­ta­tive or sen­a­tor who is opposed to a pro­posed change, there must be two who are for it, or it does­n’t advance.

Democ­rats cur­rent­ly have fifty-sev­en votes in the state House and twen­ty-eight votes in the Sen­ate, out of nine­ty-eight and forty-nine, respectively.

Six­ty-six votes are required in the House to pass an amend­ment, and thir­ty-three votes are need­ed in the Sen­ate. So, to get an amend­ment before the peo­ple, if vot­ers did not change the bal­ance of pow­er this autumn, Democ­rats would need nine Repub­li­can votes in the House and five in the Sen­ate, which they prob­a­bly would­n’t get, since the pro-repro­duc­tive rights fac­tion of the Repub­li­can Par­ty is total­ly unrep­re­sent­ed in the House and Sen­ate Repub­li­can caucuses.

Regard­less of how the 2022 midterms turn out, this idea should be brought forth in the 2023 ses­sion for a hear­ing and a vote, because threats to repro­duc­tive free­dom aren’t going away, and Wash­ing­to­ni­ans deserve to know from their next Leg­is­la­ture where their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives stand.