Abortion foes use government power to fight red-state ballot measures

An unprecedented number of abortion initiatives are on state ballots this November, nearly all seeking to protect reproductive rights, but opponents are trying to defeat them even before the start of voting through legal challenges, administrative maneuvers and, critics say, outright intimidation.

In Missouri, the Republican secretary of state pulled an abortion rights measure from the November ballot until the state’s highest court ordered him to include it.

In Florida, the governor’s election police arrived at voters’ front doors to question them about signing a petition for an abortion referendum — encounters that one man said “left me shaken.”

And in Arizona, the state’s Supreme Court allowed government pamphlets on the proposed constitutional amendment there to describe a fetus as an “unborn human being.”