Groups behind abortion-rights ballot measures in Arizona, Missouri, and Nevada are using their advertising dollars to give voters the message that they’re choosing between people and politicians.
A “yes” vote would put “women and doctors back in charge,” argues an Arizona for Abortion Access ad that’s part of nearly $14 million in television, radio, and digital advertising tracked by AdImpact.
“These decisions belong to us—not politicians,” according to a commercial that’s part of more than $11 million in advertising booked by the group Missourians for Constitutional Freedom.
The limits-on-government theme comes amid competition for viewers’ attention from candidates for president, senator, governor, and other offices—a big challenge heading into the November election.
Abortion rights measures are on the ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, and South Dakota. The New York proposal seeks a constitutional ban on discrimination based on “pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy,” among other factors, while Nebraska voters will additionally vote on a competing measure to enshrine the state’s 12-week ban into its constitution.
Between ads already aired and those for which time has been reserved in those states, AdImpact has tracked more than $79 million in spending as of Tuesday afternoon.
That total is in addition to about $800,000 in TV ads placed by the state government in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis wants voters to reject the ballot initiative. “No woman can go to jail for having an abortion,” says the commercial by the Florida Agency For Health Care Administration—a spot that doesn’t directly mention the ballot proposal (Amendment 4). “For accurate information about all your options, visit our website because Florida cares.”
After the US Supreme Court struck down the Roe v Wade precedent in 2022, voters in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, and Vermont sided with abortion rights supporters on ballot measures.
Mackenzie Quick, an assistant professor of public relations at Florida’s Flagler College, examined the Kansas campaign and concluded that voters’ desire to limit government interference was a motivating factor.
“Conservative messaging was probably the biggest difference maker,” because “they were appealing to a historically conservative electorate,” Quick, co-author of a campaign study, said in an interview.
Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, the group that successfully campaigned against an amendment that would have said the state constitution doesn’t protect the right to abortion, ran an ad in the lead-up to the vote that described the measure as a “strict government mandate designed to interfere with private medical decisions.” Another featured a doctor saying “the government wants to force doctors in Kansas to break that oath” to “do no harm.”
The people running this year’s ballot issue campaigns were paying attention.
Lauren Blauvelt, co-chair of Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, said she and leaders of previous abortion rights campaigns in Michigan, Kansas, and Kentucky “have groups behind the scenes where we share our experience and lessons learned” with the organizers of this year’s ballot initiatives, including on ways to connect with voters across the political spectrum.
“Leaders and organizers are going to make the case that this is about protecting abortion; this is about protecting important personal medical decisions,” Blauvelt said in an interview.
Blauvelt is executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio. Planned Parenthood has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg, the majority owner of Bloomberg Government’s parent company.
“We’ve always known that this is an issue that has broad bipartisan support, and so that’s who we’re messaging to, making sure that voters across Arizona, all political parties, understand that this is on their ballot,” Dawn Penich, the organization’s communications director, said in an interview.
Florida, which requires support from at least 60% of voters to amend the state constitution, has attracted the most ad spending of any of the abortion ballot measures this year, with both sides of the issue devoting a combined total of more than $30 million, according to AdImpact data. Roughly $20 million of that spending has come from Floridians Protecting Freedom, the campaign behind the measure. More than $9 million in ads opposing the measure have been funded by the Republican Party of Florida and anti-abortion groups like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
A broadcast ad from Floridians Protecting Freedom, for which the campaign has reserved more than $3 million in airtime, tells voters that supporting Amendment 4 means ending the state’s “dangerous ban,” and that the “government will never know better than a woman and her doctor.”
The Florida abortion rights campaign has “seen support from Democrats, Independents and Republicans, who all want to see an end to this ban,” said Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for Floridians Protecting Freedom.
Anti-Abortion Campaigns
Ads against the amendments argue that the measures deceive voters into supporting language that anti-abortion groups say would allow for unsafe, unregulated abortions.
“Deceptively worded abortion amendments increase government interference and health risks for women by forcing taxpayers to fund abortions and eliminating all regulations on the abortion industry,” Kelsey Pritchard, director of state public affairs for SBA Po-Life America, said in an email.
In a more than $2 million Republican Party-funded broadcast ad that began airing across Florida markets this month, Vote No on 4 says the language of Amendment 4 contains several “warning signs,” including no definitions for terms like “viability,” and “health-care provider.”
Abortion rights advocates have pushed back on this messaging, with ACLU of Florida Senior Communications Strategist Keisha Mulfort telling reporters in a Sept. 18 press call that viability is clearly defined in Florida state statute and that most citizen-led initiatives in the state have not contained an expansive list of definitions.
Similar anti-abortion messages have been promoted in Arizona by an opposition campaign called It Goes Too Far. In a Sept. 18 op-ed published by The Arizona Republic, the anti-abortion group’s campaign manager, Leisa Brug, wrote, “Arizonans voting on Proposition 139 are not choosing between abortion or no abortion.”
“They are choosing between abortion with limits and safety precautions — or unlimited, unregulated abortion, without doctor or parental oversight,” Brug said.
The ultimate test, however, will be which campaigns are best able to connect with the conservative nature of voters in key states, Quick said.
“When we’re looking at states that do have traditionally Republican strongholds, such as Arizona, Florida, and Missouri, this messaging can be really effective in attracting voters of all ideological positionalities,” Quick said. “They really are trying to cater to this middle-of-the-road voters who might be undecided.”
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