Ryan Bangert is vice president of strategic initiatives at Alliance Defending Freedom. He told the “Washington Watch” program there were “definite negative results” after Election Day, including pro-abortion measure that passed in purplish Virginia and a pro-life measure that failed in red-state Missouri.
“In Missouri, there was an effort to repeal a bad constitutional amendment that had been enacted on the previous election cycle. It failed by about 10 points,” Bangert pointed out.
AFN previously reported on the ballot measure in Missouri, Amendment 3, formally known as the Prohibit Abortion and Gender Transition Procedures for Minors Amendment. Passage of the referendum would have reversed a pro-abortion ballot measure from 2024, but it was defeated 55%-44% Nov. 3.
Looking elsewhere around the nation, Bangert said a “bright spot” for the pro-life movement happened in Idaho. That is where Proposition 1, a pro-abortion measure, was on the ballot. That ballot measure failed there 55%-44%, the same percentage as the Missouri measure, thanks to Idaho’s pro-life voters.
“So clearly there is a strong appetite on the part of voters, at least in some states, to recognize the truth that all life should be protected from conception to natural death,” Bangert told show host Jody Hice.
The ADF attorney advised there is litigation in the courts to challenge Idaho’s pro-life laws and said ADF is currently working with Idaho’s attorney general to defend those state laws.
The ballot measure in Idaho marked a second attempt by the pro-abortion side to counter those pro-life laws, he said.
Asked by Hice about the pro-life movement moving forward, Bangert said ADF is working with Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, in the fight to clamp down on dangerous mail-order abortion pills.
Murrill, he said, is “leading the charge” in that fight and ADF is happy to work alongside her.
Another pro-life battle is over free speech, Bangert said, because pro-abortion blue states are fighting the hated and unwelcomed pro-life pregnancy centers operating in their states and cities.
One of those legal fights, from New York, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court during its most recent term. That case is First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v Davenport, which ended with a rare 9-0 ruling defending free speech.
“And the U.S. Supreme Court definitively said that crisis pregnancy centers have the right to challenge these abusive subpoenas that would force them to disclose the names of women, of their financial contributors, under the First Amendment,” Bangert said.
