Anti-abortion bid may have unintended effect

Some say initiative will energize liberals, helping Democrats on 2010 ballot

Monday, Oct. 26, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Sponsor of "personhood" ballot measure, Richard Ziser, isn't worried, saying it will fire up conservatives as much as it does liberals, leading to at worst a wash.

Experts: No change in sight for state’s gay marriage ban (4-11-2009)
After Iowa ruling, LV churches take differing views on gay marriage (4-6-2009)
Outing supporters of anti-gay groups (12-26-2008)

More Sun politics coverage

Abortion rights advocates study Nev. initiative (10-22-2009)
Group proposes abortion ban amendment in NV (10-21-2009)

Carson City — The biggest fans of social conservative Richard Ziser’s newly filed anti-abortion ballot initiative might be Nevada Democrats facing the ballot in 2010.

With the top of the party’s ticket likely to be the uncharismatic duo of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his son, gubernatorial candidate and Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid, political observers say an issue like abortion could mobilize the Democratic base.

“The top of the Democratic ticket right now doesn’t inspire a lot of enthusiasm,” said Erik Herzik, professor of political science at University of Nevada, Reno. “If you throw in a red meat issue like abortion rights, it will activate the progressives and the second-tier voters in a way they weren’t before.

“This is a gift to the Democratic Party.”

The Republican base is already fired up, Herzik said, with a strong dislike of President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Reid.

Most of the Democratic base, meanwhile, views Harry Reid with emotions somewhere between resignation and loathing for his not being liberal enough, he said.

Ziser, who earlier this decade successfully fronted a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman, dismissed the early reading of his proposal’s political ramifications. Social conservatives will be just as energized as progressives, making the effect on turnout a wash, he said.

Regardless, Ziser said, the principles behind the initiative are more important than any negative effect it could have on Republicans or conservatives.

“This is not a political decision,” said Ziser, who was the Republican challenger to Harry Reid in 2004. “If all people think about are the political ramifications of something, maybe they’re not so principled. We’re not doing this because of a political outcome.”

The Personhood Nevada Petition, filed Wednesday with the secretary of state, would change the state constitution to define a “person” as anyone possessing a human genome, from the beginning of his biological development. It would ensure due process for all such persons.

If it gets enough signatures to make the ballot, voters would have to approve the initiative in 2010 and 2012 for it to become part of the Nevada Constitution.

Ziser said the proposal would ban abortion, including in cases of rape or incest, though he was less clear about instances in which the mother’s life is in danger.

He also said that the petition would protect the elderly from so-called “death panels,” which some conservatives have claimed would come about through Democrats’ proposed health care reform. The existence of such panels has been widely dismissed by experts.

Ted G. Jelen, a professor of political science at UNLV who specializes the politics of abortion, said the initiative is aimed at restricting abortions. “The argument that they’re trying to protect grandmothers is thrown in,” he said, calling the reasoning behind its inclusion “absurd.”

End-of-life panels are “something the right-wing punditocracy has made up,” Jelen said.

He said he believes the ultimate aim of the initiative is to spur the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized abortion. While the matter makes it way through the courts, state governments might enforce the constitutional change, he said.

Ziser acknowledged that the petition is part of a national movement to define “personhood.” Groups in “six or seven states” are pushing similar amendments, he said.

Jelen said the measure is unlikely to pass because of Nevada’s libertarian streak. (In 1990, Nevada voters put Roe v. Wade into the statutes.) But he can see it getting the required 97,000 signatures to make the ballot.

“Nevadans like the idea of referendum or initiatives,” he said. “The argument that has been made to me by signature gatherers is that you do not necessarily need to agree with it — should people have right to vote on it? That’s very appealing to Western voters.”

Others doubt it will make the ballot.

Jim Ferrence, a Democratic political consultant, said he expects potential signers will be turned off because “it’s too dogmatic.”

“If it does qualify, I expect it to have a crushing defeat and the effect of helping Democrats across the board,” he said.

Robert Uithoven, a senior political consultant to Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sue Lowden, said it’s too early to predict the effect, but generally “social conservative measures seem to have benefited Republicans more than Democrats in the past.”

Discussion: 9 comments so far…

By geezelouise

10/26/09 at 6:40 a.m.

Suggest removal

Stay away from the womens wombs. They are not yours to legislate.
By short_fat_hairy

10/26/09 at 7:11 a.m.

Suggest removal

Bringing abortion into politics is idiotic. If a woman has an abortion, it is her cross to bear, not society's.

On the other hand, if that woman is illegal or a teenager with no money and she has that child than it is the taxpayer's cross to bear. And I for one am getting sick of it.

Stop the insanity. We can't afford it.
By lcdrmandingonamvet

10/26/09 at 7:22 a.m.

Suggest removal

Mr. Ziser, when you get a chance, please tell me about all the COLORED babaies the GOP has mass-murdered, BBQ'ed, vaporized, and exterminated in Iraq-NAM. Can you "gin-up" some gruesome pixs of those Arab-COLORED babies too? Iraq-NAM gave me a flashback to when I was a boy being raied in Carolinas. When a white woman screamed she was raped by one of us Blacks, white lynch mobs would come to our "hood" and lynch the first Black man they saw walking.

Sounds like 9/11 to me. The GOP PO'ed and they created a policy to wipe all Arabs off the map. Massa Ziser, you should shut yo face until you take a stance to HANG Boy George, Olmert, sharon, Blair, Tenet, Cheney, Hastert, Lottt, McConnell, Frsit, Boehner, et. al.

Sincerely yours,
Retired Vietnamese baby-killer
By JohnDeaux

10/26/09 at 9:52 a.m.

Suggest removal

Stay away from our slaves. They are not persons under the constitution. Our slaves and our plantations are not yours to legislate.

-- Southern States en masse.
By KillerB

10/26/09 at 10:07 a.m.

Suggest removal

geezlouise -- damn but you know how to boil it down to the real essence! I'm on your side here.

Rather than repeat myself have a look at the other thread http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/oct...
By Harley

10/26/09 at 10:36 a.m.

Suggest removal

Legalized abortion and crime effect.

The 1972 Rockefeller Commission on Population and the American Future is one of the better known early versions of this claim, but it was surely not the first. The Commission cited research purporting that the children of women denied an abortion "turned out to have been registered more often with psychiatric services, engaged in more antisocial and criminal behavior, and have been more dependent on public assistance."

Donohue and Levitt point to the fact that males aged 18 to 24 are most likely to commit crimes. Data indicates that crime in the United States started to decline in 1992. Donohue and Levitt suggest that the absence of unwanted aborted children, following legalization in 1973, led to a reduction in crime 18 years later, starting in 1992 and dropping sharply in 1995. These would have been the peak crime-committing years of the unborn children.

The authors argue that states that had abortion legalized earlier and more widespread should have the earliest reductions in crime. Donohue and Levitt's study indicates that this indeed has happened: Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York, and Washington experienced steeper drops in crime, and had legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade. Further, states with a high abortion rate have experienced a greater reduction in crime, when corrected for factors like average income. Finally, studies in Canada and Australia have purported to established a correlation between legalized abortion and crime reduction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_a...

Prisons or abortion clinics?

: )
By KillerB

10/26/09 at 11:14 a.m.

Suggest removal

Harley -- one must wonder how much of the findings were due to being raised fatherless as well as being among the unaborted.

Never forget the REAL message of Roe v. Wade -- it's about privacy from government interference more than just legalizing abortions. You should all read it for yourselves.
By Harley

10/26/09 at 12:05 p.m.

Suggest removal

Agree abortion is about privacy, while clinic funding should also be private and not mandated upon the public.

: )
By boftx

10/26/09 at 12:17 p.m.

Suggest removal

This guy is a total idiot to a) propose something like this in the first place, and b) think that the impact on voting will be a wash.

Without this proposal, the Republicans could have taken advantage of the strong dislike for Reid, but this effectively negates that.

Free-thinkers such as myself are screwed again.

« Previous Ten Next Ten »

Live chat: Tuesday, noon PST; Chat with Krista Creelman; Problem Gambling Center executive director Krista Creelman will answer questions about gambling addiction from Las Vegas Sun readers from noon to 1 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. ... Submit question