We The People PA activists and advocates:
SB 106 is an attack on our rights and our constitution .
Yesterday, in the dead of night on July 7, the PA General Assembly advanced legislation to amend the PA Constitution in multiple ways.
One of those amendments would prohibit the PA Courts from protecting the right to abortion and possibly even empower a Republican controlled court to make abortion illegal. (The amendment is so badly written that we have to assume the worst.)
And that’s not the only disastrous amendment in this bill. It also contains four constitutional amendments that threaten to change the Pennsylvania Constitution in ways that do violence to the fundamental principles of American government.
Please use our online tool to tell your state legislators to oppose SB 106.
We knew that the General Assembly would build on the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs Wade to try to make abortion illegal in this state. The party is committed to opposing abortion in every case without exception.
But now they are trying to enshrine their beliefs in our Constitution.
We have to stop them. Click here to tell your legislator you oppose SB 106.
And the danger of SB 106 is not just to the right to abortion. It includes amendments that would:
- establish new Voter ID requirements that would potentially disenfranchise tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians.
- destroy the separation of powers and checks and balances by allowing the General Assembly to reject regulations made by the governor by a bare majority vote, rather than by a two-thirds vote as currently required by the Constitution, and by limiting the effect of executive orders and proclamations to 21 days without approval of the General Assembly. These provisions shift an enormous amount of power from the executive branch to the legislative branch in ways that directly and profoundly upset the design of the PA Constitution, which is based on the design of the U.S. Constitution.
- require that the Auditor General conduct an audit of each election. This proposal not only perpetuates the “Big Lie” about the 2020 election but would create a division within the executive branch that could be exploited to overturn the will of the voters in future elections, including the presidential election in 2024.
These destructive proposals all packed them in a legislative grab bag of constitutional atrocities that reflect the extremism of a legislative party that rejects the right t personal autonomy and that embraced Trump’s big lie about the 2020 election.. Many took an active role in his attempted coup.
If the amendments in SB 106 are ever added to the Pennsylvania Constitution we will look back at the day it passed the General Assembly as the day that the right to abortion was destroyed and representative democracy began to die in our commonwealth.
Marc Stier, Director, PA Budget and Policy Center; Nick Pressley, Campaign Director, WTP PA