By: Amanda Mazur
Pronouns: She, her, hers

As a volunteer who put much effort into trying to get Proposal 3 on the ballot and passed last year, as well as someone who experienced a crisis pregnancy that ended in abortion, I can tell you with certainty that our work to make a common medical procedure available to everyone who needs it is far from over.

A long list of harmful laws put in place by anti-abortion politicians over the past two decades remain in place, making abortion access in Michigan unnecessarily difficult despite the fact that voters across our state have voiced clear support for the right of people to have an abortion, whatever their need for doing so.

In 2017, with my husband and I expecting our second child, we learned that genetic abnormalities discovered at about 20 weeks meant the pregnancy was doomed. Rather than give birth to a child who had no chance of survival, we opted for an abortion. Because of state laws that prohibit Medicaid from covering the cost of any abortion in Michigan, and because I did not have a special rider from my private insurance – state laws prohibit abortion coverage in general public plans – we were stuck with a hospital bill that topped $26,000. Even with some financial assistance from the hospital, it took years of belt-tightening for us to pay it off.

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If the fetal heartbeat had stopped at any time before the procedure was performed, it would have been considered a miscarriage and covered by insurance. Instead, an emotionally wrought experience was made even more difficult because of the incredible stress created by a massive medical bill.

The current law is both punitive and cruel. And your help is needed to have it – and a host of other dangerous laws – removed. To learn about all the barriers to abortion access and what you can do to have them removed, sign up for a trio of virtual webinars being held to provide volunteers like you all the tools needed to help understand the scope of the problem and then help convince legislators that these harmful laws must be repealed. The first such webinar will be on Wednesday, May 10, from 6 - 8 p.m.

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I hope to see you there. 

Amanda Mazur is a volunteer with the ACLU of Michigan.

Keeping abortion legal in Michigan with the passage of Proposal 3 was an incredible victory we could not have achieved without supporters like you. But our work is far from over. 

We must undo decades of damage done by politicians who passed state laws– still being enforced today – that push abortion out of reach for many people across Michigan. These laws target abortion providers and make it very hard to open new clinics. In Michigan, only about 30 facilities provide abortion care across the state. Some 87% of Michigan counties have no clinics that provide abortions.

One appalling result of extreme laws: there are only two clinics providing abortion care north of Saginaw and they can only provide medication abortion. This is very troubling because abortion medication can only be used in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, forcing many patients who live in Northern Michigan and the UP to travel for hours to seek other abortion services. 

What makes matters worse is that abortion medication is under threat by opponents who will stop at nothing until abortion is banned everywhere. Now, they are attacking our ability to access Mifepristone, a safe and effective form of medication abortion that is used for more than half of abortions performed nationwide. If they succeed, more surgical abortions would be necessary. But Michigan does not have enough of these clinics to meet the need precisely because of state laws that intentionally make it costly for surgical clinics to exist – hence why there are none north of Saginaw. 

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We must repeal state laws that put reproductive healthcare out of reach for many Michiganders. These draconian laws make abortion care even harder to get for patients who already face the most obstacles to care, including people living in rural communities, Black, Indigenous and other people of color, people trying to make ends meet, LGBTQ+ people, young people, immigrants, people with disabilities, and those living at the intersection of those identities. 

Everyone deserves the right to access safe, affordable healthcare, regardless of who they are, where they live, or how much money they make. Join us in the fight to repeal these harmful laws.

Last year’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade proved to be a major galvanizing moment for people who support abortion rights in communities across the country as some bans already on the books began to go into effect. One of those states is Michigan, where a grassroots coalition had growing concerns about an archaic 1931 abortion ban that could go into effect if the Supreme Court overturned Roe, and had already been working to prepare. Their tireless work put abortion rights on the ballot with Proposition 3, which secures the right to reproductive freedom in Michigan, protecting abortion, prenatal care, birth control, and all reproductive health care. The ballot measure passed with overwhelming support in the 2022 midterm elections, and lawmakers quickly got to work to fully repeal the 1931 ban. This week, Governor Gretchen Whitmer made the repeal official.

This victory for abortion rights is the result of years of planning and organizing led by ACLU of Michigan, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan, and Michigan Voices. It’s an example of the power of grassroots organizing and the everyday citizens who volunteered to knock on doors, gather signatures, and show up together in coalition to fight for change. It also shows the importance of planning ahead in anticipation of decisions and policies that could impact civil rights and liberties.

Here’s how the long road to victory unfolded:

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