She doesn’t want her right to an abortion to be taken away.
Foto: IMAGO/Luke Townsend
The referendum in Kansas could pave the way to a total abortion ban, even though the right to abortion is enshrined in the constitution. In June, the Washington Supreme Court overturned the country’s abortion law: the chief justices explicitly returned the abortion issue to state voters. The referendum in Kansas now offers voters the possibility that Republican lawmakers, with a strong majority in the state congress, could overturn the existing constitutional right to abortion through restrictive legislation. Kansas is increasingly becoming a destination for Southern women; half of the abortion patients in Kansas are from outside. The Republicans must also put an end to this situation. On the other hand, anyone who rejects the referendum does not allow the MPs to do so.
The referendum was designed by the Republicans in such a way that, if possible, only their core members go to the polls: The date on August 2nd is also the pre-election day for the November elections, on which party candidates are chosen. The Democrats, however, rarely hold such campaign votes in Kansas. A third of the voters are non-partisan and are therefore usually absent. In the summer of 2018, just 27 percent of citizens voted. But this year it will be different. Because the decision from Washington overturned the conservative calculation. On the day of the anti-abortion ruling, donations to the “No” campaign “Kansas for Constitutional Freedom” began to soar. Now the “Yes” camp “Value Them Both” has a full two million dollars less; the largest donor is the Catholic Church with four million dollars.
The political language of the campaigns is unusual: “Value them both” – i.e. appreciation for mother and fetus – uses the idealistic language of the liberals. The other side, however, uses harsh, libertarian language: “Keep Kansas free”, “Say no to more government control”. Activists now going door-to-door in the July heat tell The New Yorker that 60 percent of citizens want the current abortion law to remain intact. Polls point to an unexpectedly close result: the “no” camp is only a few points behind. So Kansas will answer important questions for the nation as a whole: How united are Republicans really on this issue? How much can abortion rights advocates be mobilized against Republicans?
While both sides are cautious about the wording, it hardly means that the issue is new to Kansas. Kansas marked a kind of zero hour in the abortion controversy. In the 1960s, the state pioneered liberalization. When the national abortion law was enacted in 1973, 75 percent in Kansas were already in favor. The protests against the abortion doctor George Tiller in Wichita then became notorious. At that time, the Christian-moving protesters lay down in front of the cars of women who wanted to go to the clinic. In 1983, Tiller was shot in both arms outside his clinic. In the “Summer of Mercy” in 1986, the Christian movement in Kansas began with the stadium appearances of the preacher Pat Robertson. In 2009, Tiller was shot in front of his church while distributing leaflets.
Today, Republicans claim that a no vote would leave the abortion industry unregulated. Kansas is relatively strict: There is an ultrasound requirement and a 24-hour cooling-off period, no abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy, no telemedicine for abortion medication, parental consent for women under 18 years of age. But the Republicans have long since made the question a national question of destiny: Posters rave about a “left-wing army,” meaning Joe Biden together with left-wing stars like Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It’s Republicans in Texas and elsewhere who have doubled the number of patients at George Tiller’s Wichita Clinic in the last year. On the other hand, doctors in Kansas fear fighting battles like their peers elsewhere and fear treating ectopic pregnancies themselves. Hospital lawyers only intervene when the women are already bleeding profusely. The question of abortion rights in Kansas has been functioning like a seesaw for years: the increasing abstractness of the initiatives is opposed to the unchanged complex, concrete and bloody reality of life and death.