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Each year, Massachusetts’s residents have the opportunity to get involved in legislative ballot initiatives. You may see petition gatherers in various public spaces such as grocery stores, post offices, and filling stations. The petitioners simply ask passersby whether they want to sign a petition that will place the measure on the state ballot.
A ballot initiative to help stop taxpayer funding of abortion is currently being circulated. Many taxpayers are adamantly opposed to abortion and even those in favor of abortion don’t want to pay for them via taxes. This initiative seeks to amend the Massachusetts Constitution to include the simple phrase, “Nothing in this constitution requires the public funding of abortion.” There are 65,000 signatures needed to get the measure on the 2020 Massachusetts ballot, allowing the citizens to vote on whether they wish their tax dollars to fund abortion or not.
Massachusetts General Law defines abortion as “the knowing destruction of the life of an unborn child.” To get a picture of the number of unborn babies being destroyed, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Public Health reports that 18,570 abortions took place in Massachusetts during 2015. Based on available state-level data, an estimated 908,000 U.S. abortions took place in 2015. Since 1973, in the U.S., almost 60 million unborn babies have been destroyed.
The ballot initiative has a fast-approaching deadline of November 22, 2017. If you would like to sign the petition or help gather signatures, please call 781-312-8755, email Bernadette@StopTaxpayerAbortion.org, or visit Facebook.com/StopTaxpayerFundedAbortion.
—Kathy Lynch, Westford resident and Town/Area Captain for Stop Taxpayer Funded Abortion.
