Kansas, a conservative state in the United States, voted in a referendum to protect abortion rights, marking a significant victory for pro-choice advocates.
Voters were decisively opposed to amending the state constitution to state that there is no right to abortion.
It was the first electoral test of the issue since the Supreme Court of the United States permitted states to outlaw the practice.
If the vote had gone in the opposite direction, Kansas lawmakers may have proceeded to further restrict or abolish abortion.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion statewide, two months prior, the Kansas ballot question was much anticipated.
Projections indicate that more than sixty percent of Kansans voted to uphold the state’s constitutional right for women to seek an abortion.
Currently, it is only a prediction, and the official outcome will be confirmed in one week.
When Roe v. Wade was overturned, Vice President Joe Biden predicted that abortion rights would be a major issue for voters. The events in Kansas have proven this notion to be true.
In a state that former Republican president Donald Trump carried by 15 points just two years ago, the result of the vote is viewed as a landslide.
For Democrats and pro-choice groups, this is evidence that Americans are dissatisfied with the Supreme Court’s decision to repeal abortion rights, and that the Court’s decision is out of sync with public opinion.
On November 8, the United States holds national midterm elections, with Democrats attempting to keep control of Congress.
Mr. Biden stated that the findings indicated that “the majority of Americans feel that women should have access to abortion.”
One voter, Taylor Hirth, cried while celebrating the election results with her nine-year-old daughter in Overland Park, Kansas.
“As a survivor of rape, the notion of my daughter being pregnant without my ability to intervene anger me,” she told the BBC.
“I never imagined that this would occur here, but we have worked so hard to turn out the vote. We were underestimated by Republicans.”
Respect Them Both, a Kansas-based anti-abortion organization, stated that “Kansans faced an avalanche of misinformation from extreme left organizations” regarding the amendment over the past six months.
“This is a momentary setback, and our struggle to value women and children is far from over,” the organization’s Twitter page stated.
On the day of a primary election, when Republicans often exceed Democrats by a factor of two to one, Kansas officials reported that voter turnout was much greater than anticipated.
A Catholic church and a statue of the Virgin Mary were damaged with red paint and a pro-choice slogan in the month leading up to the vote.
On the eve of the election, several Kansans got misleading SMS asking them to “vote yes” to safeguard choice, even though a “yes” vote would restrict abortion access. Twilio stated that it had banned the anonymous sender from its platform.
Although Kansas is a highly conservative state, its abortion laws are less restrictive than those of many other Republican-controlled states.
It permits terminations of pregnancies up to 22 weeks with additional restrictions, including a mandated 24-hour waiting period and parental consent for minors.
The legislature of the state in the Great Plains is dominated by anti-abortion Republicans, but Laura Kelly, the state’s politically vulnerable governor, is a Democrat. She had warned that modifying the Kansas state constitution would “return the state to the dark ages.”
Since the June 24 Supreme Court decision, more than a dozen states run by Republicans have sought to outlaw or substantially restrict abortion.
However, the right to abortion is established in the state constitutions of ten U.S. states, including Kansas, and can only be removed by referendum.
Other states, such as California and Vermont, will hold elections in November to strengthen abortion provisions in their state constitutions.
