Americans pride themselves on living in a land where the right to “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” is enshrined in our most cherished documents. But we cannot claim that there is any truth to this doctrine if the medium through which we actually live that life, our very physical bodies, are not uniquely under our own personal decision-making control. For roughly 50% of the country, this is what is at stake with Proposal 3 in the upcoming election. Will we allow those with the capacity to become pregnant the chance to dictate whether that is a bodily outcome they desire? Or do we suddenly consider that particularly the women of this nation do not deserve to pursue their own happiness, dictate the potential for their own life, and have the liberty to do so?

Bodily autonomy is not specified in our founding documents, and yet it has long been understood to be the very foundation of freedom itself. We allow people to accept or refuse medical care as they see fit. We allow them to choose unscientific, medically unsupported alternative care if that’s what they wish. As the COVID-19 epidemic has too vividly shown, even when the good of society is at stake, we do not force people to be vaccinated or to vaccinate their children. Even in extreme cases, personal decision-making over one’s own body remains sacred: if a child with a rare blood type can only be saved by a single person’s donation of plasma, that person cannot be forced to donate it.

And yet somehow whether a person has the right to make decisions about one of the most intimate, personal, and potential life-altering issues — reproduction — is something that we find on the ballot. How is this even a question? But there is a very easy answer. Proposal 3 will ensure every Michigan citizen, and those who visit our state, will have the right to make decisions about all aspects of their reproductive health, from contraception to childbirth, to pre- and post-natal care, to whether a pregnancy is carried to term or whether, due to personal decision or the acts of nature, it is ended. Surely there is no issue more related to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” than what our family will be, or even if we wish to have one.

We cannot, on the one hand, claim to uphold these great American values while leaving the door open for them to be denied to a significant percentage of our population. The citizens of Michigan deserve better. I strongly encourage everyone to vote “YES” for Proposition 3 in our upcoming election. Let us show our fellow Michiganders and the rest of America that we truly believe in the equal rights of all to live up to the promise of those words in our Declaration of Independence, and ensure that everyone in our state has the independence to do so.