The fear that some girls could be at risk if their parents were told they planned to have an abortion combined with a "just say no" mood among voters to sink the parental notification measure on Tuesday's ballot, strategists who worked on the campaign said Wednesday.
Partisans on either side of the abortion debate cited two other reasons, as well, for the defeat of the initiative, Proposition 73.
Some backers of the initiative said their opponents succeeded in part by yoking the initiative in voters' minds to the unpopular Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Opponents of the initiative cited the growing unease among abortion-rights advocates about the threat to legal abortion nationally. That anxiety, especially with President Bush's recent nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court, helped motivate voters on the abortion-rights side, they said.
"I think we definitely got an environmental bounce from some of these other factors that had nothing to do with our campaign," said Kathy Kneer, president of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California. "But the bottom line is, voters decided to put teen safety first and express their respect for the constitutional rights of all California women."
Dan Schnur, a Republican strategist, said he believed the larger battle over Schwarzenegger's agenda affected the vote on abortion. "Parental notification is an issue that splits the pro-choice vote right down the middle, so if 73 had been on the ballot by itself, it might have passed," Schnur said. "Instead, it got caught in a special election that became a highly charged, highly partisan brawl."
Unofficial election results showed the measure losing 52.6% to 47.4%. It was defeated most decisively in coastal counties, with the exception of Orange, Ventura and San Diego. Its biggest margins of support came in rural California.
While disappointed, supporters of Proposition 73 vowed to regroup.
"First we'll do some debriefing and figure out what lessons we've learned," said Rob Pennington of Right to Life of Central California, a Fresno-based group that promoted the measure among evangelical Christians. "But this is about protecting our girls from sexual predators and abortion providers. Nobody is giving up."
Others in the coalition of religious and conservative groups that pushed the measure said they would use their combined energy to take on other issues. Some want to target Medi-Cal payments for abortions, while others are working to restrict sex education in schools or place a constitutional ban on gay marriage on the state ballot.
