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Saying the state needs to take a “bold and proactive step” to protect women’s reproductive rights in New Jersey, state Assemblyman Joe Danielsen recently made the first move toward codifying that protection in the state Constitution.
Danielsen (D-17) introduced a bill – ACR 156 – on February 25 that would ask voters in the November general election if reproductive rights should become part of the state Constitution.
The bill would have to be approved by three-fifths of both the state Senate and General Assembly before the ballot question could be added at the next general election. Alternately, getting a simple majority of state Senators and Assembly members to approve the measure in two consecutive years would also get the question on the ballot in the next general election.
Should voters then approve the question, the language would be incorporated into the Constitution 30 days after the election.
“Reproductive freedom is an essential right for women here in New Jersey,” Danielsen said in a press release about his legislation. “And as that right is under attack across the country, the time has come for New Jersey to make a bold and proactive step to defend this right.”
“We have made amazing progress here in New Jersey on reproductive freedom,” he said in the release. “But now is the time to take the next step and constitutionally protect reproductive freedom”
Currently, while New Jersey is a nationwide leader in reproductive freedom, these rights are not included in the state Constitution, according to the release. New Jersey courts have inferred the existence of this right based on the state Constitution’s broad protections of individual rights to privacy and liberty and have concluded that the New Jersey Constitution protects a pregnant person’s right to an abortion in the state.
Even with New Jersey’s progressive history regarding women’s reproductive rights, it’s not a bad idea to work for Constitutional protection, said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics in New Brunswick.
“If there is something as significant as women’s reproductive health that is threatened, getting it into the constitution makes it a little bit safer if the political tides turn, if things change,” she said. “Especially in a moment like right now, where everything feels uncertain, being able to have that as a constitutionally protected right, it removes it a little bit from being vulnerable from being restricted in any way.”
“Right now, New Jersey is a state where there is good access, but I think for activists in this space and for women who care for having access to reproductive health care, having it codified makes it that much more secure,” Walsh said.
Walsh said she did not think that any gains made by Conservatives in the last presidential election would doom a public vote on the question, if it comes to that.
“We saw in very red states when this issue is on the ballot, protecting access to women’s reproductive health care, it does quite well,” she said. “Even in Florida, it was on the ballot, it didn’t pass but you had to have 60 percent of the vote and it came very close. You saw it do well in Arizona, Ohio, in places where Donald Trump won, voters still voted for reproductive health care access.”
“I don’t think that the majority of Americans support actually returning to the pre-Dobbs-decision environment, they support Roe v Wade,” she said, referring to the Supreme Court case which overturned a woman’s right to an abortion. “I don’t see that this would necessarily change just because of the kind of shift we have started to see in New Jersey.”
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