On the hot afternoon of June 24 when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Nikole Walker, at 50 years old, felt that she no longer wanted to be silent or feel ashamed. That she didn’t have to continue hiding from the case of sexual abuse she suffered when she was 10 years old and the abortion she had when she was 11. “Only a few close friends and my husband knew the full story. Even my children didn’t know about abortion. But that day I told him and I felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders,” Walker says. Two years later, she continues to explain her story to defend abortion rights in the United States, including Proposition 139 that will be voted on on November 5 in Arizona.
This key state will vote during the presidential election on whether to include an amendment to the state constitution to protect abortion rights. Nine other states will also hold referendums on November 5 to decide whether to do the same: Montana, Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, New York and South Dakota. In total, 13 states have already made abortion access illegal and 12, including Arizona, are labeled by the Center for Reproductive Rights as “hostile.”
Abortion has become one of the central issues of the campaign and in recent months has caused some problems for Donald Trump. The Republican maintains a fragile balance in his positioning. On the one hand, he boasts of having appointed three of the six conservative judges who repealed Roe and On the other hand, he affirms that he will not prohibit abortion at the federal level if he wins the elections.
“From the minute one he fell roe I felt so angry and so sure that this was wrong, that I no longer felt that shame. And since then, people are using the word “abortion” in ways they haven’t before. Paradoxically, banning abortion has made the stigma disappear,” explains Walker at her home in Flagstaff, two hours from Phoenix. “The next thing I thought about was my daughter, who was 17 years old at the time. As a precaution I bought Mifepristone [medicamento para abortos farmacológicos] because I didn’t know what could happen after that.”
A year and ten months after Walker feared the worst, the Arizona Supreme Court put on the table the possibility of recovering an 1864 law that prohibited abortion in almost all cases. Although it ultimately did not go ahead, it represented “a total change in how many people viewed abortion.” Instead, congressmen passed a law to prohibit abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The result was that 577,971 signatures were submitted in August, more than the 50% necessary for the proposed constitutional amendment to appear on Arizona ballots this November. This is the largest number of certified signatures for any ballot measure in state history.
“We have all been sharing not only our abortion stories, but also our stories of being raped, abused and mistreated. And women are beginning to realize that they should not be blamed. I don’t applaud the fact that it has been revoked. roebut there has been a big paradigm shift with all these issues. We have seen how telling our stories gives us power in a context where you feel that your autonomy over your own body is being taken away,” reflects Walker.
Currently, in Arizona you can only abort up to week 15. “The tests to see if the fetus has malformations or problems are performed between weeks 15 and 20. With that, you can see how limiting Arizona’s prohibition is. This results in people who need medical care having to leave the state or being forced to continue with a pregnancy knowing that the baby will die within hours of being born,” explains Walker.
In the final stretch of the campaign to obtain the necessary support, Hannah and Erika go door to door to remember the importance of voting for Proposition 139. “I decided to start with the door to door a little before the 2020 elections because I was already frustrated with the four years of Trump and I needed to feel like I was doing something to change things,” explains Erika while before knocking on the door of one of the 51 houses that he visited. day. “We knew that the repeal of Roe could happen, so we already had a plan for when it did,” Hannah adds.
The defense of reproductive rights has been Harris’ main battlehorse during the campaign. As soon as she became the Democrats’ new candidate after Joe Biden’s resignation, Harris promised to sign abortion protection at the federal level. That is why in Arizona there are those who interpret that the referendum could favor it. Although the latest polls do not say the same.
Trump continues to lead Harris by two percentage points in Arizona, according to the poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight. Instead, the latest Sienna College poll shows 58% of likely voters in the swing state say they will vote in favor of Proposition 139.
In one of the houses where we approach, a middle-aged woman serves us. She is a Republican and is not interested in knowing anything about the Democratic candidates in Arizona, but when Erika talks to her about Proposition 139, her attitude changes: “Yes, I will vote for it.”
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