Will Michigan Constitutional Amendment Allowing Abortion
Put The Abortion Issue On A Back Burner?
Abortion has been the number one political topic since Roe vs. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in June, 2022. Unfortunately, this has caused other important issues to receive less political attention and debate for the up coming mid term elections. Hopefully, the proposed Michigan constitutional amendment allowing abortions will pass by a wide margin. In doing so the role of the Michigan legislatures concerning abortion will be greatly reduced because the right to have an abortion would be in the Michigan constitution. Legislative action interfering with abortion will be unconstitutional, and hopefully our representatives would see the futility of keeping the issue at the forefront.
Taxes are a case in point. The Michigan Constitution clearly states that Michigan should have a flat tax rate, and not a graduated income tax rate. The issue of a flat tax rate vs. a graduated tax is rarely discussed because it is firmly embedded in the Michigan constitution. Several times proponents of a graduated income tax got a proposal on the ballot to change the tax rate in the Michigan Constitution to a graduated income tax. Those proposals were defeated by wide margins, and have not appeared on the ballot in years. I feel that is because the margin of defeat for those types of proposals was so large. Hopefully, this will be the case with abortion, and we can move on to other issues.
I mentioned the above at a recent Rochester Area Democratic Club meeting. I was surprised how wrong I was. There was a lot of vitriol directed towards me and the other side concerning abortion and related issues such as birth control. I stirred up a hornets nest when I was trying to promote peace and calmness.
I will be voting in favor of the right to abortion amendment. I hope that the passage of the amendment will act like the smoke a bee keeper applies to the bee hive in order to calm down the bees. So far I have not seen anything that would enable me to be optimistic.
Theodore A. Golden, M.D.