Michigan Democrats are pushing "right to kill" legislation as a way to boost Gretchen Whitmer's re-election chances and forever deregulate abortion in the state.  Innocuously called the "Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment," its eight short sentences eliminate any rights that the child would have had and gives people carte blanche.  It amounts to just kill the baby. 

Supporters of the amendment claim to have well over the number of signatures required to put it on the ballot this fall and plan to submit them shortly.

LANSING — Supporters of Michigan's abortion rights ballot initiative have collected nearly 800,000 signatures — almost double the required number of eligible signatures — ahead of a Monday deadline to qualify for the November ballot, campaign co-chair and Ann Arbor Councilwoman Linh Song announced. 

Reproductive Freedom for All, a statewide campaign sponsoring a ballot proposal to enshrine abortion rights into the Michigan Constitution, must turn in at least 425,059 valid signatures by Monday to present the issue before voters in November. The group's efforts took on urgency following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade was first leaked in May.

The amendment says that "every individual has a fundament right to reproductive freedom, which entails 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."  It goes on to declare, "An individual's right to reproductive freedom shall not be denied, burdened, nor infringed upon unless justified by a compelling state interest achieved by the least restrictive means."  And there's this for creative Democrat judges: "[n]otwithstanding the above, the state may regulate the provision of abortion care after fetal viability, provided that in no circumstance shall the state prohibit an abortion that, in the professional judgment of an attending health care professional is medically indicated to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual."

It's hard to see how this amendment can't be used to completely deregulate abortion in Michigan.  The clause that subjects all abortion law to the "professional judgement of an attending health care professional" who's charged with protecting the "physical or mental health" of the "pregnant individual" is amazingly unspecific.  Which "health care professionals" are included?  Can a dentist okay an abortion?  Will Michigan become the home for people holding themselves out as pregnancy counselors and whose permission can go unchallenged? 

Also out the window are trimesters, viability, late-term, parental notification, and consent.  Lost in all this is the baby.  A human life rendered meaningless.  Just kill it.  It's abortion unrestricted and unregulated.  It's hard to imagine such a law with no public hearings.

Curiously, the Michigan ACLU announced the amendment in January — a full six months before the so-called "leak" of the Supreme Court's Dodd decision.

LANSING, Mich. –  Today Reproductive Freedom for All, in coalition with ACLU of Michigan, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan, and Michigan Voices, filed paperwork with the Board of State Canvassers to begin a ballot petition drive to protect reproductive freedom, including access to abortion, in Michigan.

The Michigan ACLU indicates that Reproductive Freedom for All is a campaign led by "ACLU of Michigan, Michigan Voices and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan."  It would be unconscionable of Michigan voters to allow Planned Parenthood to write the state's abortion law.

It all makes Thomas Lifson's recent questioning of the veracity of the Supreme Court "investigation" of the leak look curiouser and curiouser.

Image: Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy University of Michigan via Flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0.