Right to Life Michigan Surrenders on Dismemberment Abortion Ban Petition Drive

On Tuesday Right to Life Michigan ended its effort to legally defend the validity of it's petition drive to end dilation and evacuation abortions in the state of Michigan. 

If successful the petition drive would have allowed the Republican controlled state legislature to make the ban state law without the signature or veto of Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer. This would have been an import move because Whitmer is a vociferous supporter of the legalized killing of the unborn and advocate for the abortion mill Planned Parenthood.

Right to Life Michigan issued the following statement:

Lansing, MI — Right to Life of Michigan will not challenge the Bureau of Elections’ recommendation that there were not 340,047 valid signatures in the Michigan Values Life petition drive to ban dismemberment abortions.
The Board of State Canvassers will meet Friday to consider the Bureau of Elections’ recommendation.
The following statement can be attributed to Right to Life of Michigan President Barbara Listing:
We know we submitted signatures from more than 340,047 registered voters. It is tragic that children will continue to be dismembered because we lost just enough signatures due to errors and petition damage like small tears and stains. Instead of focusing on court challenges regarding the counting process, we will be focusing on the critical 2020 elections moving forward.
Our volunteers did an excellent job, but the bulk of the errors were things beyond our control, specifically people not knowing their voter registration status or forgetting they already signed the petition. Because we were about 20,000 signatures short of our goal of 400,000, we left room for Planned Parenthood to pick us apart so they can continue profiting from dismembering babies. We must hit our goal next time we do a petition drive.
Our petition drive system works well in normal times, but this time we were forced to fight a series of unprecedented battles we did not choose. We had to retrain volunteers for a different petition drive law, the dismemberment ban was never sent to the governor to veto, a competing prolife petition drive confused people, and we faced other challenges every step of the way.
The biggest hurdle was the large turnout in the 2018 election, which increased the number of signatures required. Our signature total would have been more than required in any previous year in Michigan history. We submitted about 65,000 more signatures than we did in our successful petition drive in 2013 to stop taxes from paying for abortion insurance coverage. It wasn’t enough this time.
The effort behind this petition drive was worth it and will carry forward. Thousands of volunteers were mobilized to educate more than 400,000 people about this barbaric abortion procedure.
We overcame 17 vetoes to ban tax-funded abortions in Michigan. We overcame three court challenges to ban the partial-birth abortion procedure. This was our first attempt to end the dismemberment of babies in Michigan, and we will continue working until we end this form of violence and protect the lives of every unborn child.
For more information: Right to Life of Michigan Legislative Director Genevieve Marnon, (517) 487-3376, info@rtl.org.

To understand the brutality of the D&E abortion procedure you can check out the following video produced by Live Action:

In their own press release celebrating the news Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan credited Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel and the Democrats that voted for them in 2018.

The credit for this victory goes to all the pro-choice voters who turned out in 2018 to vote for reproductive health champions like Gov. Whitmer and AG Nessel. 

Elections have consequences and by having a high mid-term election turn out it raised the bar on how many signatures Michigan Right to Life as well as the Michigan Heartbeat Coalition had to try to gather on their respective pro-life petitions.

A vote for any Democrats in Michigan in 2020 is a vote for more innocent unborn children to be killed.