Orlando college students worked the line outside a Charli XCX concert, handing out “Yes on 4” bracelets. Their peers in Arizona targeted bars and art shops, pitching people one-on-one to show up on Nov. 5 to vote on an abortion ballot question.
Young adults on the other side of the issue are putting up banners near campuses and knocking on doors to get out their message that abortion rights proposals are too extreme.
The efforts targeting younger voters could make a difference as 10 states make decisions about whether abortion access will be limited or protected in state constitutions.
Along with elections to decide which judges will arbitrate state laws, those ballot questions — initiated in response to the US Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision — will determine reproductive rights access for years to come.
“Young people who care about abortion are really likely to be engaged,” said Ruby Belle Booth, a researcher at the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE, at Tufts University. The center’s 2022 elections report found voters ages 18 to 29 were more likely than adults in any other age group to list abortion as a top priority issue.
This year, more than 40 million Gen Z members ages 18 to 27 are eligible to vote, including roughly 8 million who have aged into the electorate since the 2022 midterm elections.
One of these new voters is Lola Fontanez, an 18-year-old student at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. She is one of 12 student leaders across 10 college campuses working as fellows for the campaign to add abortion rights to the state’s constitution (Amendment 4).
Fontanez said the Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to an abortion and the arrival of Florida’s six-week abortion ban fueled “a lot of fear” among her contemporaries.
“There’s such a huge voting block that has been subject to these bans,” and “now they have the opportunity to vote,” Fontanez said in an interview by a table she and other organizers set up twice a week on UCF’s campus to share information on Amendment 4.
Young voters are especially important in Florida, where organizers need 60% support instead of a simple majority to amend the state constitution.
Gabriel Gomez, the youth organizing director for Yes on 4, said the campaign’s goal is to reach at least 2.1 million Florida voters ages 18 to 35 through on-campus canvassing, door knocking, online ads, and text and phone banking.
In Arizona, the campaign backing an abortion ballot question (Proposition 139) awarded grant money to the groups Rise and the Arizona Students’ Association.
Two out of three Gen Z registered voters in Arizona said in a June survey that they planned to vote this year, with 74% saying “reproductive rights/abortion” was a “very” or “extremely important” issue for them.
Young people “live in a time where we have seen rights that have existed for generations stripped away from us, and this is an opportunity for us to take back that power,” said Kaylan Fodor, political coordinator for Healthcare Rising Arizona. The ballot organizing group is one of the members of the Arizona for Abortion Access coalition.
Michael Bloomberg, majority owner of Bloomberg Government’s parent company, donated $1 million each to Arizona for Abortion Access and the abortion rights measure group Missourians for Constitutional Freedom. He also gave $750,000 to the ballot measure organization Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom, according to campaign finance filings.
Vote ‘No’ Efforts
At the same time, Students for Life Action is sending organizers to knock on doors, hold on-campus events, and participate in a billboard truck tour encouraging “no” votes on the amendments in Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Montana, and Nebraska.
Abortion measures are also on the ballot in Colorado, Maryland, Nevada, New York, and South Dakota.
Kristan Hawkins, who has helped lead Students for Life of America since 2006, said in an interview that the group’s goal is to counter the “pro-abortion misinformation spreading about these ballot referendums.”
“It’s cruel that we continue to deceive voters into believing, especially young people, that there are no protections for mothers who are facing life-threatening situations while pregnant,” Hawkins said, pointing to the statutory exceptions in states with complete or near-total abortion bans.
For campaigners on both sides of the debate, motivating students to vote presented some challenges since they may change addresses frequently, may not be registered to vote, or may be unfamiliar with how the laws where they’re living are different than the laws back home.
At an October Yes on 4 event in Orlando, many of the students who spoke with Fontanez and fellow student organizer Chastity Nix hadn’t heard of either the ballot proposal or Florida’s six-week abortion ban.
“A lot of our job has really just been educating students and making sure that they know what Amendment 4 is,” Fontanez said.
One of the students who stopped by was Arielle Yantin, an 18-year-old who said in an interview that she didn’t know all of the specifics of Amendment 4, but still planned to support it.
“I personally believe that a woman should have a right to her own body,” Yantin said.
That same weekend, dozens of students and staff affiliated with Students for Life drove throughout the suburbs to put up a “Vote No on Amendment 4” banner along a highway overpass and distribute pamphlets among 20,000 households.
Mia Akins, a 20-year-old student at Florida International University in Miami, said in an interview that she traveled to Orlando for the two-day event to “stand for the pre-born.”
Olivia Torralba, Students for Life’s southern regional manager, said in an interview at the door-knocking event that young people are a crucial voting bloc for the ballot measures.
“Our youth are going to be the motivators of this election,” Torralba said.
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