Volunteer-led anti-abortion initiative appears on its way to November ballot

Volunteers gather signatures for the ballot initiative to ban state-funded abortions. (Oregon Life United)

Oregon voters may have the chance to vote on whether to ban taxpayer-funded abortions come November.

Oregon Life United, the political action committee behind the anti-abortion initiative, announced Friday that it turned in 141,200 signatures by Friday's deadline.

The initiative would prohibit the use of state funds to pay for abortions except in cases of rape and incest or instances where the mother's life is in danger. This mirrors federal regulations that strictly limit the use of federal money to pay for abortions. If the measure passes, abortions would no longer be covered under the Oregon Health Plan, which paid $2.4 million for 3,769 abortions in 2016, according to Oregon Health Authority documents.

The campaign needs 117,578 valid signatures for the question to appear on the ballot. Jeff Jimerson, the director of the committee, said 10,650 volunteers collected more than 150,000 signatures from across the state. This exceeded their initial signature goal of 150,000 to account for signatures deemed invalid.

The group "scrubbed" the list to remove duplicates and mistakes, Jimerson said, and turned in the roughly 140,000 signatures to the elections office in Salem by deadline.

"We feel pretty good about that number," Jimerson said.

Although they had filed the paperwork with the elections office to pay circulators, they didn't need to do so, he said. It was a "100 percent volunteer effort."

If the initiative meets the signature requirement, it will be the first ballot measure to appear before Oregon voters without the aid of paid signature-gatherers since 2000 and the first anti-abortion ballot measure since 2006.

The elections office has one month to validate the signatures and determine if the question can appear on the ballot.

But the committee's efforts and "volunteer-only" claim may take a hit after several complaints were filed with the state alleging violations of election law.

Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon filed a complaint on Tuesday saying that Oregon Life United potentially paid employees to gather signatures without registering as paid signature circulators with the state. This follows a May 15 complaint by the ACLU of Oregon, NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon and the Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon that said the committee failed to report certain campaign contributions. They also raised the concern about paid signature circulators.

Jimerson said the allegations of paying circulators are "baseless." While the two employees in question were paid, he said, they were paid for other duties, not to collect signatures. He added that there's nothing in the rules that says they can't gather signatures on their own time. As for the campaign contributions, he said he made a mistake which has since been corrected.

"I think this is really just a desperate attempt to try and steal signatures from hardworking volunteers," Jimerson said. "They're basically trying to make us look bad ... [and] keep voters from voting on this. It's pretty ugly."

A broad coalition of abortion-rights and progressive organizations, including the groups behind the election complaints, announced their "No Cuts to Care" campaign in opposition to the anti-abortion initiative Friday.

-- Corlyn Voorhees

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