Besides city business, the controversial reversal of Roe v. Wade by the United States Supreme Court was on the minds of some Mt. Pleasant city commissioners Monday night.
During the portion of the meeting reserved for commissioners to comment on items, Mayor Amy Perschbacher noted that voters can demand change at any level of government.
Perschbacher’s comment came after Commissioner Liz Busch announced that the Michigan Reproductive Freedom office in Mt. Pleasant in the Stadium Mall on South Mission Street is open from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Monday through Friday to collect signatures to ensure that reproductive rights of women in Michigan will be protected in the state’s constitution.
Perschbacher said decisions made by governmental officials affect everyone, regardless of whether it’s state, local or federal.
She also expressed a desire to ensure that personal rights and freedoms remain intact.
“Be kind to each other and let’s move forward and try to get back the rights that were given us,” she said.
Commissioner Mary Alsager, although not commenting specifically on the petitions or the SCOTUS decision on Roe v. Wade, said her heart was warmed by a rally in Mt. Pleasant on Sunday.
The Michigan Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative, established after SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade, was launched to get enough signatures to create a state constitutional right to reproductive freedom.
“The term ‘reproductive freedom’ would be defined as ‘the right to make and effectuate decisions about all matters relating to pregnancy, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, sterilization, abortion care, miscarriage management, and infertility care,” according to the website Ballotpedia.
If enough valid signatures are submitted, the ballot initiative would provide that the state can regulate abortion after fetal viability. except that the state could not ban the use of abortion to ‘protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual’ as determined by an attending health care professional,” according to the website.
The proposed amendment would ban the state from discriminating in the protection or enforcement of the fundamental right, and the state would not be allowed to penalize, prosecute, or take any adverse action against a woman based on “their actual, potential, perceived, or alleged pregnancy outcomes, including but not limited to miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, nor shall the state penalize, prosecute, or otherwise take adverse action against someone for aiding or assisting a pregnant individual in exercising their right to reproductive freedom with their voluntary consent.”
“Fetal viability” is defined in the proposed amendment as “the point in pregnancy when, in the professional judgement of an attending health care professional and based on the particular facts of the case, there is a significant likelihood of the fetus’s sustained survival outside the uterus without the application of extraordinary medical measures.”
