A young woman on Instagram smiles into the camera. The caption: “My reaction to your abortions.” One abortion, thumbs up. Five, thumbs up. Eight, still smiling. After that, a shrug and “hmm, ok.”

The video has more than a million views. Its most-liked comment: “100 abortions > 100 kids.”

Other comments drew tens of thousands of likes. “I got an abortion w each boy. Told my husband I had a miscarriage.” And: “I’m either having a girl or an abortion.”

That’s where much of the abortion debate has drifted. On November 3, voters in Idaho, Nevada, Virginia and Missouri will decide whether to write that drift into law.

For a generation, Democrats promised abortion would be “safe, legal and rare.” Millions of Americans who were uneasy about abortion, and uneasy about bans, took that promise at face value.

But the party dropped “rare” from its platform in 2008. Since then, the movement has shifted from treating abortion as a tragedy to celebrating it. “Shout Your Abortion” is now a slogan, not a confession.

This fall’s ballot measures show how far that shift has gone.

Idaho’s Proposition 1 would ban limits on abortion before a baby can survive outside the womb. That leaves little room to stop an abortion chosen because the baby is a boy, the very choice those commenters bragged about. For decades, aborting babies because of their sex meant the “missing girls” of China and India. Now, as The Economist reported, the preference is flipping toward girls, and the law would say nothing about it.

Virginia’s Question 1 would block limits on abortion in the last three months of pregnancy whenever the mother’s physical or mental health is at risk. That exception has no clear limit. Today, Virginia requires three doctors to agree; under the amendment, one would do. Massachusetts went further in August, passing a law under which a doctor’s sign-off is the only requirement after 24 weeks.

Supporters say late abortions almost never happen, and only in emergencies. Neither claim holds up.

About 1% of U.S. abortions happen at 21 weeks or later. With more than a million abortions a year, that’s about 12,000 babies a year, at or near the age when a child can survive outside the womb.

And researchers who favor abortion rights found that most women seeking later abortions aren’t facing a deadly diagnosis for the baby or a threat to their own lives. More often they are young, raising kids alone, fighting with a partner, or slow to realize they were pregnant. Those are real hardships. They call for real help, not an abortion late in pregnancy.

Another scare this season is the claim that pro-life laws prevent doctors from treating miscarriages or pregnancies that implant outside the womb and can never survive. They don’t. No state abortion law bans that care. A review of 27 states’ laws found that every one either says these treatments aren’t abortions or allows them as medical emergencies. Where the wording was vague, Idaho, Tennessee, and Texas fixed it. Every state should. The cure for a confusing law is a clear law, not an unlimited right to abortion.

Nor is it true that limits don’t work. When the nearest clinic moves from within 50 miles to 50 to 100 miles away, abortion rates fall 16%. Researchers estimate that state bans led to more than 22,000 additional births. That’s 22,000 children.

Behind each of those births is also a mother who may not have planned that pregnancy. Taking both lives seriously means she should never feel forced to choose between abortion and a child she can’t afford. That means practical help, from prenatal care to rent and diapers, and a respected path to adoption.

Missouri voters get a second look. Amendment 3 would repeal the sweeping abortion-rights amendment they passed in 2024.

Most Americans aren’t in the “100 abortions” camp. In Gallup’s polling, only about one in five say abortion should be legal in the last three months of pregnancy. Voters want women protected and children given a chance.

These ballot measures go much further than that. Read the fine print before you vote. “Rare” isn’t on the ballot.

***

Stephen Cranney is a Penn-trained demographer and data scientist at the Catholic University of America.

Shima Baradaran Baughman is the Woodruff J. Deem Professor of Law at BYU and a Distinguished Fellow at the Wheatley Institute. She has written for The New York Times opinion pages, and her research has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

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How The Left Traded A Tragic Choice For Instagram Likes And Now It’s On The Ballot