After achieving phenomenal success on Nov. 7, pro-abortionists smelled blood, and are looking to duplicate their success in other states — especially Florida.
Abortion proponents saw particular success in Ohio, where voters approved Issue 1, which enshrined in the state Constitution the right of a mother to abort her unborn child at any stage of pregnancy — up to the moment of birth.
There are several similarities between Ohio and Florida, making Florida a target. Both states having statutory six-week abortion bans, and have GOP-majority legislatures and Republican governors.
But despite the similarities, the Sunshine State may be a tougher nut to crack.
Floridians Protecting Freedom, a statewide political committee, is supporting the initiative, titled "Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion."
Like the Ohio ballot measure, this one sounds fairly innocuous. Who can be against limiting government interference over our lives?
It would provide that "No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient's health, as determined by the patient's healthcare provider," according to a summary.
But Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is fighting back, and has taken her case to the state Supreme Court.
She and other opponents to the ballot measure raised a number of objections to its wording, which they believe is open to interpretation, chief among them the word "viability."
"As just one example of how misleading this initiative is, the initiative creates a right to abortion through 'viability.' ... The sponsor has gone so far attempting to deceive Floridians as to not post any information on its website on what it means by viability and when the right to abortion, which it is attempting to enshrine in our Constitution, ends," she said.
"While I personally would not vote for this initiative no matter what definition of 'viability' it was using, I know that to some voters, it is material to their vote – whether you are talking about an abortion in the first trimester or at the end of the second trimester."
Democrat politicians have joined the usual suspects to support the initiative, including state or local chapters of Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union.
But other than the state attorney general it has another foe: the Florida Constitution itself.
Florida requires a 60% popular vote to approve any constitutional amendment. Three months before Ohioans approved a constitutional amendment to make abortion available without restrictions, they voted on an amendment that would also require a 60% vote on amendments.
That initiative failed. As a result, Jonathan Jakubowski, Ohio political influencer, former county GOP chairman, author, and a strong pro-lifer, wasn't very optimistic about Ohio's Nov. 7 vote.
"Some early polls show us down as much as double digits, although only roughly 30% of those polled have actually seen ads," he told Newsmax.
"We've got a mountain to climb and we need a miracle from the Lord to reach the hearts of Ohioans to understand the severe consequences of this anti-parent, anti-life measure."
He was spot-on. Had the 60% vote initiative passed, the abortion amendment would have failed. Instead it was approved by 56.62% of the electorate.
Speaking on American exceptionalism before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2011, the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that he often asks student groups: "What do you think is the reason that America is such a free country?"
They invariably list items from the Bill of Rights, including "freedom of speech, freedom of the press, no unreasonable searches and seizures."
But he observed that "every banana republic in the world has a bill of rights," and that even the former Soviet Union's bill of rights "was much better than ours." Scalia called them "just words on paper" and "a parchment guarantee."
He said that what makes America exceptional is a "structure" that makes it difficult to pass a law.
It has to be approved by both chambers of Congress (which may be controlled by different parties) and signed into law by an independently-elected president having veto power.
Constitutional amendments are even more difficult. They have to be approved by two-thirds of each chamber of Congress, then ratified by 75% of the states.
The separation of powers creates gridlock, of course, but Scalia said we have to "learn to love the separation of powers, which means learning to love the gridlock, which the Framers believed would be the main protection of" minority interests.
Had Ohio created more gridlock — had it succeeded in making it more difficult to approve state constitutional amendments — it wouldn't have shared an abortion policy with the most progressive states in the country.
With any luck Florida's 60% threshold will be sufficient gridlock to prevent it.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.