It makes sense, I suppose, that a doctor who was once the medical director for the lead company in the abortion industry would want to kill a state constitutional convention while it’s just a few words on the November ballot.  But Rhode Islanders should read Pablo Rodriguez’s essay, in today’s Providence Journal, closely enough to see the scare tactics within.

In Rodriguez’s telling, if a constitutional convention is permitted to grow through infancy to maturation, it would not only be a drain on the resources of its parent government, but it might turn around and restrict the rights of those who brought it into being:

The risks to our minority communities and to women in these situations are enormous. Necessary legal challenges to these policies are costly and can take years to resolve.

Contrary to the scary rhetoric, voting for a constitutional convention doesn’t implement any policies whatsoever; Rhode Islanders will be able to vote directly on any change to the constitution before it becomes law.  Somehow, according to Rodriguez, when the people get a direct vote, it makes it less likely that the people will get their way.  Go figure.

Most of his examples come from elsewhere.  That is, if Rhode Islanders don’t vote like Rhode Islanders, but like Alabamans, they’ll get results that Rhode Islanders wouldn’t like.  (Yes, that really is the logic on display.)

Of course, the one local example that Pablo can offer undermines his entire case.  In the late ’80s, he says, the convention barely agreed to let voters consider a pro-life policy.  Rhode Islanders voted it down by a two-to-one margin.  In other words, if Rhode Islanders vote to give constitutional amendments some consideration, they might later have to vote against amendments they don’t want.  Scary!

The civic argument that Rodriguez makes is equally bizarre.  He states that convention delegates never have to run for reelection, so they aren’t “accountable to voters.”  (Except, of course, for the fact that voters must individually approve every amendment that they suggest.)

Yet, he goes on to point out that half of legislators in the General Assembly have no opposition in the next election.  Somehow, Rodriguez wants Rhode Islanders to believe that the fact that the people who make the laws are largely unaccountable to voters means we don’t need a direct vote to reform our government.  Got that?

In advocating against a constitutional convention, abortion-mill Planned Parenthood has joined with a gang mainly consisting of government labor unions.  Between Rodriguez’s strange, boogeyman arguments, one can see the shape of their real concern.  It’s expensive to persuade the people; special-interest insiders would rather keep things as they are, firmly in their pocket.  They’ve already bought off the state government.

Don’t seek a vote, Rodriguez is saying, just wait for “the right leadership.”  Naturally, his allies work tirelessly year in and year out to kill the political careers of any such leaders before they ever have a chance.

The doctor writes about “the promise of a bright, shiny object, the false hope of a constitutional convention.”  The only bright, shiny objects that I see are the knives and other implements of death and dismemberment that the activists use to put an end to any threat to their own power.