While Democratic state House minority leader Christine Greig admits that the bills have no chance of passing, she told Daily Kos that their introduction makes an important statement. “If we do not continue to have these conversations and stand up for access to safe and legal health care for reproductive health, then we're not doing our job,” she said. “We have to have this conversation and push these policies on an ongoing basis.”

The state’s Democratic leadership, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, won’t be alone in focusing Michiganders on that conversation. Last month, Planned Parenthood launched a planned $45 million organizing effort to drive anti-choice lawmakers out of local, state, and national office.

As recently as August, Planned Parenthood was considering a ballot drive of its own in Michigan. Instead, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan spokesperson Angela Vasquez-Giroux told Daily Kos that the organization will throw itself into “putting more pro-choice legislators in office … That’s not something we can accomplish with a ballot drive.”

“We think our best investment will be in getting a better legislature,” she added.

This week, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan will host four community conversations in four days as part of the beginning of its efforts. Events will be held in Ann Arbor, Lansing, and Detroit.

As Democrats and reproductive rights activists swing into action for 2020, one of the two extremist groups is disturbingly close to making its latest dream come true this year. In September, the Right to Life coalition reported that it had collected more than 200,000 of the roughly 400,000 signatures it needs to have in hand before the Dec. 23 deadline. This isn’t the first time Right to Life has used bait-and-switch tactics to force its will on Michiganders, the majority of whom believe abortion should be legal in “all/most” cases, according to the Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study. In June, The Detroit News published a poll showing that 58% of the state’s residents oppose the Right to Life proposal to ban dilation and evacuation abortions, with nearly 50% strongly opposing the idea. But that doesn’t matter to the group, which has worked with Republican-dominated legislatures to pull a ballot proposal bait-and-switch four times since 1987.

Nor is the group shy about its tactics. In an Oct. 22 Washington Post article, Genevieve Marnon, Right to Life of Michigan’s legislative director, actually bragged, “We are the most successful organization in the state’s history of doing this.”

The group behind the six-week abortion ban hasn’t been as successful, but it is equally dogged. In October, the group announced it had collected “slightly more than 100,000” signatures and vowed to keep going as long as it has to in order to collect the necessary number of signatures within the 180-day time limit mandated by Michigan law.

The future may look bleak for Michiganders’ reproductive rights, but Leader Greig said there’s hope because the state’s voters “have seen this playbook before.” In addition to extremists using ballot proposals to do an end run around voters and probable gubernatorial vetoes, most recently Michigan’s Republican leadership denied voters a chance to decide on ballot proposals that would have raised the minimum wage and mandated paid vacation time. Instead, the Republican legislature passed and gutted both measures after they qualified for the 2018 ballot.

“I think there's a lot more opposition to this not only because it's terrible policy, but also it's an attack on democracy as well,” Greig said. She added that Michigan voters understand the stakes: “I mean, when we have one of the leaders of the Republican Party comparing [abortion care] to slavery, who knows what's next?”

Dawn Wolfe is a freelance writer and journalist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This post was written and reported through our Daily Kos freelance program.