The People’s Override Frequently Asked Questions and Answers

Q. Why do we need this petition drive?
A. Because Gov. Granholm vetoed the Legal Birth Definition Act which passed by wide margins in the House and Senate, this is the only way to enact this law in 2004.

Q. Will this law stop all abortions?
A. No. This law will define legal birth and the commencement of all the rights of legal personhood as the time when a child is in the process of being born.

Q. How many partial birth abortions are performed annually in Michigan?
A. No one knows for sure. In 1997, Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, estimated that partial birth abortion was performed 3,000 to 5,000 times a year. The Alan Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion organization, claimed the number of partial birth abortions in our country more than tripled from 1996 to 2000. In 2002, the Michigan Department of Community Health reported that 237 abortions were performed in our state after 21 weeks’ gestation (making these children prime candidates for partial birth abortion).

Q. Is this the same legislation the President signed?
A. No. Both pieces of legislation have the same goal: banning partial birth abortions, but they take very different approaches. The federal legislation specifically bans an abortion procedure while the state legislation defines legal birth as when any non-severed part of a child is outside of the mother’s body. Once a person is legally born, that person is afforded all of the rights of legal personhood, thus making partial birth abortion equivalent to murder.

Q. Is partial birth abortion ever medically necessary?
A. Experts in the fields of obstetrics and gynecology have testified over and over again that the procedure known as partial birth abortion is never medically necessary to save the life or health of a pregnant woman.

Q. When will this be on the ballot?
A. It won’t. This petition is for citizen initiated legislation, meaning with enough registered voters’ signatures (verified by the State Board of Canvassers), it will become law with a simple majority vote in the State Legislature. The governor has no role in approving or vetoing the law.

Q. What about a case involving the life or health of the mother?
A. Contrary to the false claims of the governor, the bill includes provisions for a physician to protect life or physical health of the mother, so long as the life and health of the child is taken into consideration as well. The bill does not protect mental, emotional, financial, social or any other type of nonphysical “health” that may be cited as a reason to kill a child in the process of being born.

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