By Chuck Donovan

The biggest contest next Tuesday, November 5, is without doubt the race for the White House. With various suggestions that this will be the last quadrennial election in our democracy, put me on the side of those who think it likelier that the race for the White House in 2028 will be in the news before the doomsday talk takes hold. On one subject matter at least, however, next Tuesday’s election will be fateful: the installation of abortion on request in state constitutions.

Florida is arguably the most critical, because of all the states to consider abortion ballot questions to date, it has the most factors in favor of pro-life success. To begin with, advocates of unlimited abortion need to garner 60% of the popular vote to prevail. Other states have required mere majority votes. Second, the Florida fight has featured all-in engagement not only from a popular Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, but from his vibrant wife, Casey, a mother of three and a cancer survivor who speaks compellingly about the value of human life.

Moreover, Florida is home to a Republican registration advantage over Democrats to the tune of 1.055 million votes as of September 30. The pro-life issue is not exactly a Republican issue only, but the parties diverge on the core questions raised by what is called Amendment 4. Those include late-term abortion, potential public funding of abortion, abortions carried out by non-physicians or by mail, and abortion promoted and carried out on minor children without parental consent.

The word “radical” is bandied about everywhere these days and has lost some of its force, but if it means anything in the abortion context, the proposed Florida constitutional amendment is indeed radical. Only a dozen nations in the world, including the tyrannical People’s Republic of China, have such regimes of prenatal bloodshed.

DeSantis has been hands-on in this historic campaign to date, defying political consultants elsewhere who are urging pro-life voices to keep a low profile. As he said on Tuesday at the latest of numerous press conferences and issue briefings, what advocates for Amendment 4 “mean, and this will likely be something they sue over … [are] elected abortions on demand for no reason, whatsoever through 26 weeks. So six months, you can have an unborn child, fully formed, [with a] beating heart who can feel pain and be aborted.”

With energy and eloquence, DeSantis has brought to the stage figures like the former Tampa Bay Buccaneers Coach Tony Dungy, whose family has adopted eight children. Dungy told Floridians, “It’s personal, because I happen to believe that these babies in the womb are lives. I know everybody doesn’t believe that, but I happen to believe it. My Bible tells me that they are. … Yes, we need to protect our mothers, but we need to protect those children as well.”

Abortion is immensely lucrative, and perhaps even more importantly it is the object of affection from some of the world’s wealthiest individuals and nations, who see the practice as critical to execute their vision of limiting or reducing world population. On that ground, their effort is succeeding as the planet experiences dire declines in birth rates in many countries, including the United States, Europe, and Japan. By early October, a review of data compiled by the watchdog group Open Secrets concluded that abortion advocates had raised eight times as much money —$108 million compared to $14 million brought in by pro-life groups.

Florida’s is just one of 10 ballot questions that will be decided next Tuesday. The others include Arizona, Nebraska, Missouri, and South Dakota, all states that enacted or reactivated laws protecting unborn children in most situations. The remaining states could fairly be described as more liberal generally — some legalized abortion legislatively prior to the court mandate in 1973 in Roe v. Wade. These include Colorado, New York, Maryland, and Nevada. Montana is the 10th state that will consider the issue, alongside a U.S. Senate race there that may affect the balance in that chamber.

The upshot is that next Tuesday’s election may decide the legal status of abortion in several jurisdictions for more than the next four years. The fate of hundreds of thousands of unborn children, and the well-being of their mothers, hangs in the balance. But more than the legality of abortion is at stake in these debates.

To begin with, the broad language of the ballot initiatives puts other issues in play besides abortion, as practices like surgery to remove healthy sex organs from children and other gender-altering practices may be affected by language expressed in broad constitutional terms. As Missouri pro-life leader Sam Lee has noted regarding his state’s Amendment 3, “The vague and overly broad language of Amendment 3 could lead to extreme interpretations, including the inclusion of gender transition surgeries, which raise serious ethical, moral, and public health concerns. Additionally, the lack of clear limitations, particularly regarding minors and parental consent, threatens the traditional family structure and undermines parental rights.”

These impacts underscore the truth that in addition to the lives at issue, these state constitutional proposals threaten core institutions and relationships — the sexual bond between men and women, marriage as an institution, the primacy and privileges of family life, the irreplaceable role of parents in guiding the moral, spiritual, and education development of their sons and daughters.

In abortion, a life is lost. In gender surgery, the natural capacity of a man or woman is lost. But in the larger sphere, the meaning — the natural reality — of these entities that precede government, that are not creatures of the state under its manipulation and control, is compromised and at risk of complete destruction. In its place are schemes of commerce and contract, which can be altered more or less at whim.

We will all be the poorer if Amendment 4 passes in Florida. We will be more disjunct, more separated as men and women, more powerless as mothers and fathers, more isolated and less truly free. If Amendment 4 is defeated, however, our work will only have just begun. The campaigns of decades to ensure families are valued and supported, that fidelity and good parenting are encouraged, and that human life is prized will need to accelerate. They will need to reach the level of assuring women that they do not face an unexpected pregnancy alone and that care is close at hand.

Earlier this year, as part of its efforts to document the extraordinary array of services provided by pregnancy help organizations, Charlotte Lozier Institute released its summary of accomplishments by these Florida nonprofits in 2022. With services that are mostly free to the clients, the Sunshine State’s centers provided $14.99 million in medical services, conducted 47,615 free ultrasounds, met with more than 74,000 new clients, and conducted more than 196,000 virtual and in-person sessions overall. These sessions, which were combined with the provision of material goods, parenting education, and free after-abortion support and recovery when requested, are both holistic and life-changing. They give women and families hope and a way forward.

On November 5, voters in Florida and nine other states have an opportunity to choose a way forward that has sweeping significance for the quality of life and meaning of community in neighborhood after neighborhood. Choosing correctly will have an impact for generations to come.

Chuck Donovan is a veteran family policy analyst and former Executive Vice President of Family Research Council.