After Roe, high stakes for Michigan ballot measure to protect abortion rights

By James Oliphant

ST. CLAIR SHORES, Mich (Reuters) - The latest front in the U.S. war over abortion was waged last week during an idyllic summer evening on Michigan's lakeshore.

Outside a park where kids ate waffle cones and hundreds of people listened to a concert in the band shell, volunteers collected signatures in support of placing a measure on the November ballot that would amend the state's constitution to safeguard abortion rights.

Their task took on new urgency after the U.S. Supreme Court on June 24 overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized abortion nationwide and left the issue to individual states to regulate.

In Michigan, where opinion polls show the majority of people support abortion rights, Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer filed a lawsuit to invalidate a 1931 state law that makes abortions a felony and establish a state constitutional right to abortion. A court has temporarily blocked that law from being enforced, but the Republicans who control the state legislature want to keep the ban on the books or enact a new one.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/roe-high-stakes-michigan-ballot-100228949.html