The abortion rights and potential legal fights coming after Michigan’s Prop 3 won | CPT PPP Coverage

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Mark your calendar for Dec. 23. That’s the day Proposal 3, the constitutional amendment reviving Roe v. Wade, is added to Michigan’s founding document.

There is debate over what happens to certain laws when the amendment goes into effect. But at the most basic level, Michiganders receive “a fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” according to the full amendment text.

“This will render unconstitutional the 1931 law prohibiting abortion,” Wayne State University law professor Robert Sedler told MLive.

Sedler, who consulted with the American Civil Liberties Union on Prop 3, said other laws may be challenged, like Michigan’s 24-hour waiting period and a parental consent requirement for minors seeking abortion.

But he said it won’t be the Wild West of immediately canceled protections that opponents proclaimed, such as health and safety regulations and a law specifying who can perform abortions.

Before any lawsuits come, Sedler said, the state legislature could act, the attorney general could give an opinion as to what laws are nullified, and judges could play roles.

Democrats – who now control the House and Senate – could be motivated, for example, to repeal the waiting period law or edit the parental consent law, Sedler said. He also noted parental consent can already be bypassed if a probate judge decides the girl is “mature enough to make a decision on her own.”

Related: Proposal 3 passes, etching abortion rights into Michigan Constitution

The anti-abortion coalition that opposed Prop 3, Citizens to Support MI Women and Children, vowed to hold proponents accountable that only the 1931 abortion ban be invalidated.

“We expect the authors of this proposal to respond to the inevitable flood of litigation that will come with this amendment by insisting that laws like parental consent be upheld, as they promised the people of Michigan,” spokesperson Christen Pollo said in a statement.

Michiganders approved Prop 3 by more than 13 percentage points, and it even outperformed Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 82 counties.

Prop 3 doesn’t just protect abortion. According to the amendment’s first paragraph:

“Every individual has a fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which entails the right to make and effectuate decisions about all matters relating to pregnancy, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, sterilization, abortion care, miscarriage management, and infertility care.”

One thing that opponents argued Prop 3 would usher in is abortion up until birth.

The amendment allows lawmakers to regulate after “fetal viability,” according to its text, when the attending physician believes “there is a significant likelihood of the fetus’s sustained survival outside the uterus without the application of extraordinary medical measures.”

While opponents argued an exception “to protect the life or physical or mental health” of the mother could be used as a loophole for abortion until birth, Sedler called that “nonsense.”

“The idea is that abortion is only prohibited when a doctor determines that the fetus is viable, capable of living outside of the uterus,” he said.

Things that Sedler noted could happen after Prop 3 goes into effect include women traveling from restrictive neighboring states like Ohio and Indiana, and someone possibly arguing in court that Michigan’s law prohibiting Medicaid funding for abortion is now unconstitutional.

But regardless of the legal fights that follow Prop 3?s placement in the constitution, the amendment itself is safe from anti-abortion interest, Sedler said.

“I don’t really think they could do much of anything,” he said.

Read more from MLive:

5 long-term impacts Proposals 1, 2 could have on Michigan

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Michigan sees Democratic domination after party sweeps state, legislative and federal contests

DePerno not ruling out run for Michigan GOP chair after AG loss