Maria Wanchic: Coming To Understand Measure 1

I grew up in the country side just outside of Bismarck.  I remember as a kid my parents made us brothers and sisters pull weeds in the garden.  Mom would always remind us to pull the weeds out by the root.  “If you don’t get the root out, then they’ll just keep coming back.” she would say.  The idea of getting to the root has stuck with me through the years.

When SB 4009 (Measure 1) was first introduced in the legislature I knew little about it but supported it because I’ve always been in favor of abortion regulations in our state. However, before I could defend and promote the measure to the best of my ability I wanted to fully understand the root issue that brought it about to begin with.

I’m just as busy as the next person so investigating Measure 1 became a year long journey of discovery.  After digging deeper and deeper through the mud and muck I felt like I finally got to the root and boy was it an ugly one.  Not only ugly but huge and spread out.  This was somewhat disheartening but the shining ray of hope in all this was an appreciation and gratefulness to all the people and local organizations who were and continue to work diligently to contain this massive weed.

This journey has helped me to discover many important things:

1. The history behind abortion and the Roe v Wade case
2. How North Dakota reacted to the 1973 ruling
3. Realizing just how many abortion regulations are in effect here in our state
4. How the pro-abortion groups are preparing for a reversal in the Roe v Wade case by systematically and proactively securing abortion rights in state’s constitutions
5. How activist judges legislate from the bench
6. How to follow the money
7. Most importantly why Measure 1 is going to protect our laws and why it’s one of the most important votes in our state history

At times it was difficult and frustrating to understand the mess of the root system.  I was basically teaching myself about complex topics like constitutional law, fundamental rights, advanced directives, and the relationship between federal and state law. This could be mind-numbing at times but what really got me motivated to do all the research was a feeling of justice and even anger toward the scare tactics being used to manipulate my fellow North Dakotans.  Using emotions to sway the voters instead of facts and truth is the same as lying in my opinion.

The final straw happened in the first week of October when I learned that North Dakotan’s Against Measure 1 received over a million dollars from Planned Parenthood.  (95% of all their donations.)  I thought to myself, “How dare they try to win this election with money and lies!” That was when I decided to get serious about making a video to share with everyone.  People deserve to know the truth and that’s really was it all boils down to.