There have been a lot of claims on both sides about what the impact of Proposal 3 would mean if it were to pass.
Proposal 3, at its core, would enshrine access to abortion and reproductive health care into the state constitution. That means Michiganders would be afforded the same rights that were outlined in the1973 Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, which was overturned this year.
The proposal would allow the state to regulate abortion after fetal viability, but the state couldn’t place limits if abortion was medically needed to protect a patient’s life or health, including mental health. Prop 3 would ban state discrimination and prosecution of a pregnant person who gets an abortion, and/or someone helping them, like a doctor or someone who provides transportation to a clinic. It would also invalidate state laws that conflict with it, namely the state’s 1931 abortion ban.
Read: Is Prop 3 too confusing? Here’s what the Michigan abortion rights proposal would do if it passes
That last part has been the major issue, outside of how people feel about abortion and reproductive care morally. We took those legal questions to experts.
First, we spoke to professor Ed Goldman, the director of the University of Michigan Reproductive Justice program. Goldman is an expert on the intersection of medicine and the law.
We asked whether a list of laws including consent, parental consent to treat a child, child access to gender-affirming care or even infanticide would go away under Prop 3. His answer at every turn was no.
“The notion that children will be able to get an abortion on their own without parental notice or consent I think is incorrect,” Goldman said. “The basic right a child has is the right to grow up, and so what the state says (to children) is: ‘you have to go to school, can’t drink until a certain age, can’t drive until a certain age ... can’t have an abortion without parental notification or consent or a judicial bypass.’ Those laws are regulating how children grow up. Those laws are not going to go away.”
Despite Goldman’s answers and the answers of other medical law experts, there are still concerns -- so we asked another expert in the field of reproductive law who also teaches constitutional law: professor Leah Litman. Her answers were the same.
“We are talking about a solution to a problem that just doesn’t exist, because there isn’t a problem with Proposal 3 invalidating the litany of common sense public health measures that are totally consistent with evidence-based science and clinical judgements,” Litman said.
Read: Full text of Michigan’s Proposal 22-3 ‘Right to Reproductive Freedom’
Read: Michigan Voter Guide 2022: Get to know key races, ballot proposals before voting