Kansans have voted to protect abortion rights in their state. The result leaves no room for doubt and is a huge victory for the movement that defends the right of women to decide, precisely in one of those robustly conservative places in the United States. 60% of those summoned to the polls this Tuesday, on the occasion of the primaries that choose which candidates each party sends to the legislative elections next November, have spoken out (with 87% of the vote counted) against a initiative of the parliament, of republican majority, that tried to add an amendment to the Constitution. That new text left legislators free to prohibit or severely restrict the right to abortion, legal in that State, of almost three million inhabitants, until the 22nd week since the last menstruation.
Due to its great symbolic load, the referendum has had a great impact throughout the country, whose two halves, opposed on this issue perhaps more than on any other, have followed with passion.
It is the first vote of these characteristics since the Supreme Court repealed on June 24 the precedent of half a century established by the ruling Roe contra Wade, which in 1973 made women’s freedom to choose constitutional. The judicial decision returned the power to legislate to the States. Since the ruling, 11 have prohibited or severely restricted the right to abortion, thanks to laws approved by their legislators that were hibernating to take effect once the Supreme Court, the most conservative in eight decades, opened the door.
The text that was submitted to a plebiscite was certainly confusing; so much so that both parties used a good portion of the millionaire funds invested in the campaign to explain what it meant to vote yes (which actually meant saying no to abortion) and the implications of a negative vote, which is the one that has triumphed by a wide majority, looser than the polls predicted.
The amendment to the basic text that was proposed sought to allow the “people, through their representatives”, “to pass laws on abortion, including, but not only, norms that take into account the circumstances of pregnancy as a result of rape or incest , or situations in which the life of the mother is at stake”. The new paragraph also made it clear, in a tricky wording, that “Kansasians value both women and children.”
If the yes had gone ahead, a ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court that in 2019 ruled that abortion was protected in the State Constitution would have been deactivated. That decision has tied the hands during this time of Republican lawmakers, whose majorities in Congress and the Senate allow them to override a possible veto by Democratic Governor Laura Kelly. They won’t be able to. After the unequivocal popular pronouncement, Kansas remains a refuge State, which will continue, as it has until now, receiving patients from other places where care is denied to women by law: fundamentally, from neighboring Oklahoma and Missouri, but also from states like Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama.
“Kansas values have always exemplified freedom, and tonight, Kansas continued that legacy,” said Emily Wales, director and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, a nonprofit association that has three of the five clinics that provide reproductive health services in the State. “Anti-abortion politicians put this amendment on the ballot in the primaries, counting on a low voter turnout, but they did not take into account Kansans – who said loudly and clearly that they believe and trust patients to make their own medical decisions – especially during a dark time in history when people in the Midwest and South of the country are not afforded the same freedom.” Planned Parenthood Great Plains also works in Oklahoma and western Missouri, two of the states where abortion is prohibited with very few exceptions.
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, has issued a statement half an hour after the AP agency conceded victory. Voters in Kansas turned out in record numbers to reject extremist efforts to amend the state constitution to strip women of choice and open the door for a statewide ban. “This vote makes clear what we know: A majority of Americans agree that women should have access to abortion and make their own decisions about their health care. Congress must listen to the will of the American people and restore the protections of Roe as federal law.
The surveys that establish the position of the Americans on this issue establish around two thirds the portion of the citizenry that is in favor of some type of protection of the right to abortion.