Voters in as many as eight states will vote on abortion this year

Ballot initiatives will decide the future of abortion in some states

The future of abortion access is in voters’ hands.

Nowhere is that more true than in the states with a record number of abortion-related ballot measures this year.

Abortion policies will be on the ballot in as many as eight states — from enshrining reproductive rights into the state constitution to declaring there is no state constitutional right to an abortion.

The ballot measures give both sides an opportunity to appeal directly to voters in the months after the nation’s highest court overturned Roe v. Wade. The outcome could have long-lasting repercussions on the abortion protections or restrictions states like Kentucky, Kansas and Vermont are able to put into place. 

Here’s where abortion is on the ballot — or where campaigns are rushing to collect the required signatures.

• Voters in Kansas and Kentucky will decide whether to amend their state constitutions to explicitly state that the charter doesn’t grant the right to an abortion.
• Vermont and California are moving to enshrine the right to an abortion into their state constitutions. In Arizona and Michigan, abortion rights advocate have less than a week to submit enough signatures to put similar measures on their ballots.
• Montana voters will decide whether to give personhood protections to and require providers to give lifesaving treatment to infants born alive after an attempted abortion.
• A Colorado campaign must garner enough support by August for voters to consider whether to make abortion illegal.

In two states, the race to send in enough signatures is closing in.

In Arizona, the deadline is tomorrow. Over 356,000 valid signatures are needed in order for voters to decide whether to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. 

Yesterday, Arizonans for Reproductive Freedom volunteers fanned out across the state to pick up sheets of signatures and get the documents notarized. The May leaked draft showing a majority of the justices were poised to overturn Roe instigated the campaign, which was quickly pulled together in the span of less than two months. 

• “Members of the community decided that there had to be something done now to save reproductive rights in Arizona, because we knew in this state that we had what we call zombie laws on the books,” said Shasta McManus, the campaign’s treasurer.

But will the long-shot bid work? That’s still to be determined, with McManus’s house serving as the final counting spot to get the signatures ready to turn in. 

Meanwhile, in Michigan … Abortion rights advocates are staring down a July 11 deadline to send the state more than 425,000 signatures. 

Supporters of the ballot measure are putting signatures through a “rigorous checking process” before submitting them next week, said Ashlea Phenicie, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan. She expressed confidence the campaign would meet the threshold to get onto the November ballot. 

The first major vote comes next month. On Aug. 2, Kansans will decide whether to overturn a 2019 state Supreme Court ruling that protected the right to an abortion.

The Republican-controlled legislature placed the measure on the primary ballot. Abortion rights supporters contend that’s a tougher hurdle to climb, arguing that August turnout is typically smaller and could be more conservative. The other side charges that such an argument is misleading, saying that putting it on the primary helps voters focus on the measure rather than other high-profile issues on the November ballot.

Yet, both sides say momentum has picked up since the nation’s highest court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion.

• “Since the Dobbs ruling, we have seen even more energy from the pro-life movement and from Kansans from all walks of life,” said Brittany Jones, a spokesperson for Value Them Both, which supports the ballot measure. “Kansans value moms and babies. They want to be able to protect them.”
• “We have definitely seen a significant increase in volunteer engagement — people signing up to volunteer, whether that be canvassing, phone banking, writing postcards, calling their friends,” said Ashley All, a spokesperson for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, which opposes the amendment.

Pfizer reaps outsize profits and influence from pandemic

Pfizer’s success in developing covid-19 medicines in the early days of the pandemic has yielded outsize benefits for the drugmaker, which has since raked in enormous profits and now wields huge influence over U.S. health policy, Kaiser Health News reports. 

But some experts worry that Pfizer’s growing influence in the realm of medical decision-making, which has traditionally been led by independent efforts, could be directing the country’s response to the pandemic before public health agencies have had time to study the matter. 

Catch up quick: The pharmaceutical company has roughly doubled its revenue largely due to its vaccine, which dominates the U.S. and European markets, and its antiviral Paxlovid, the first oral covid-19 treatment.

The reliance on Pfizer products at each stage of the pandemic has greatly influenced critical public health decisions, KHN’s Arthur Allen writes. There have been several instances where company executives have suggested adults may need additional booster doses, because the vaccines’ protection from infection typically wanes, and senior health officials have concurred shortly after — giving the impression that the drugmaker was calling the shots.

• Just last week, the Biden administration agreed to purchase another 105 million doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine modified to target early omicron variants for $3.2 billion.
• Company officials have similarly spun recent reports that the virus can reemerge after completing its treatment Paxlovid into good news, predicting that, as with the vaccine, patients may need multiple courses.

The market for Pfizer’s product isn’t going anywhere as the virus continues to mutate and infect ten of thousands of people each day as pandemic precautions fall to the wayside. The company has shelled out millions to lobbying firms to protect its products and promote vaccination campaigns moving forward. 

Democrats look to support key governors races with reproductive rights fund

The Democratic Governors Association launched a new fund yesterday to invest in gubernatorial races in states where abortion access is at risk.

The “Protect Reproductive Rights Fund” comes as a part of a broader effort by the Democratic Party to use the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade to galvanize its base in the midterm elections.

Chaired by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, the fund aims to raise $10 million to support elections in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin, ABC News reports. Each of those states either have GOP-controlled legislatures who have passed abortion restrictions recently blocked by a Democratic governor or are listed as “certain or likely to ban abortion” by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. 

More from the Democratic Governors Association:

Here’s the latest breakdown of abortion access across the country: 

FDA eyes media-savvy adviser to help with PR woes

The Food and Drug Administration is eyeing a public health expert-turned-cable personality to shore up the agency’s communication with the public and lawmakers on Capitol Hill following recent messaging missteps, Politico‘s Adam Cancryn reports.

Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist and frequent TV commentator, is the leading candidate to become the FDA’s principal medical adviser. He’d take a key role in crafting the agency’s communications strategy — a high-level position officials hope will bolster trust in the agency as a public health authority.

The search for a top adviser comes as the FDA has taken a central role in simultaneous efforts to battle the pandemic, ease the shortage of infant formula and protect abortion access, Adam notes. But the agency has stumbled repeatedly in its messaging on those issues, frustrating lawmakers and denting its reputation in the process. 

• Criticisms include the FDA’s mixed messages over the delay of coronavirus vaccines for young children, and the agency’s sluggish response to the formula shortage and the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe. 

Federal West Virginia opioid verdict postpones another local suit

A West Virginia trial in a lawsuit accusing the country’s three largest pharmaceutical distributors of fueling the opioid epidemic throughout the state has been postponed after the companies prevailed in a federal-court case that raised similar concerns earlier this week, Reuters reports. 

Scheduled to begin yesterday, the trial was supposed to test the local governments’ allegations against McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health, which they accuse of flooding West Virginia with opioids and allegedly failing to ensure the pills were prescribed only for legitimate medical use. No new date has been set for the state court trial.

In the federal case, Judge David Faber rejected efforts by local West Virginia governments to force the three distributors to pay over $2.5 billion to address the issue. Cabell County was flooded with over 81 million prescription painkillers over eight years — enough for 94 pills for every adult and child per year, our colleagues Meryl Kornfield, Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz report. 

• Faber found there was “nothing unreasonable” about the companies’ sale of opioids to fulfill legally written prescriptions, and that they had “substantially complied” with their obligation to track and report suspicious drug orders, Reuters noted.

• In Florida: A ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy is in effect again. A court order briefly blocked its enforcement yesterday, but then the injunction was lifted after the state appealed.
• In Mississippi: A judge denied a request to block the state’s “trigger law” banning nearly all abortions, with providers arguing the right to abortion is protected under a privacy clause in the constitution, Axios reports.
• The highly transmissible omicron subvariant BA.5 has become the dominant strain fueling new coronavirus cases in the United States, according to new estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Thanks for reading! See y’all tomorrow.