Suggestions that Proposal 3 on the upcoming Michigan ballot are “confusing” are completely absurd. Have people who think this even read it? It’s very clear about what it intends to do. Prop 3 will give to Michigan what the Roe v. Wade decision once gave America: an assurance of reproductive rights balanced against fetal viability.

The Roe decision understood that abortion rights are about gradually more competing interests. A first trimester pregnancy is not, despite the language in some recent letters, a baby. For the first eight weeks, it’s scientific term is an embryo, and most people wouldn’t be able to distinguish it from the embryo of other mammals at this stage. A fetus is only beginning to develop blood at the 12-week mark. This is clearly neither a baby nor a being capable of any independent existence. No one is arguing that this is not living tissue, but tissue is not a person, and there is no scientifically sound argument that this is yet a person. It doesn’t have rights because potential-beings are not beings, and it’s appropriate that at this stage, a pregnant person’s right to decide that they don’t want to carry that pregnancy further makes sense. And it’s during these first three months that the vast majority of abortions occur.

Roe realized that the further a pregnancy develops, the more it makes sense to think about whether that someday-person should be considered. But Roe, and Prop 3, also recognized that things can go wrong at any stage of gestational development. By definition, an abortion late in a pregnancy is a tragedy. These pregnancies were intended to result in a live birth, something desired by the person who had chosen to carry it that far. These cases are the most dramatic example of why need the protections for Proposal 3, although it’s important to remember that they are also, statistically, very rare. But without the assurances that Prop 3 provides, families who find themselves with a catastrophic situation late in pregnancy, which could harm the fetus, the gestating parent, or both, could have no options whatsoever. A lack of enshrined reproductive rights in our state could condemn these families to at best an emotional trauma, and at worst the death of the fetus and/or the parent. Prop 3 provides families with the option to save lives and to save babies from short, agonizing lives before early deaths.

Roe was never confusing. We all knew exactly what it meant, and the same is true for Proposal 3. Arguing that it’s unclear is trying to create a conflict in the face of the fact that the overwhelming majority of the state and the country support reproductive rights and were in favor of Roe. I sincerely hope that our community reflects these wider trends, and that people here will vote “YES” on Proposal 3.