Kansas overwhelmingly votes down anti-abortion constitutional amendment:
Abortion-rights forces scored an upset victory in Kansas on Tuesday when voters rejected an amendment that would have allowed the state legislature to ban the procedure.
The vote, which comes just six weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, means Kansas will remain one of the few red states where abortion is legal. It also provides hope to abortion-rights supporters who are betting on ballot initiatives in other conservative states to restore or maintain access to the procedure.
Emily Wales, the president of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which covers Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma, said seeing the effects of abortion bans recently going into effect in roughly a dozen states made the issue more tangible for Kansans and spurred them to vote no.
“This level of government overreach — literally interfering in the decisions a physician and patient make together — has resonated with people in Kansas,” she said. “It’s a scary moment to think that you or your loved one might be in a situation where it’s not up to you or your provider what care you can get and instead it’s up to the government and what they think you deserve.”
Turnout for the primary also soared above usual levels Tuesday, and in some counties was closer to the participation usually seen in a presidential election. The in-person early vote, which tends to favor Democrats, was also nearly 250 percent higher than the last primary midterm election in 2018, when both Democrats and Republicans had competitive governors’ races, while the number of mail-in ballots was more than double.
The “no” campaign also outperformed in fairly conservative areas — like in Shawnee County in the eastern part of the state, coming in several points ahead of President Joe Biden’s results there in 2020.
Even in precincts that voted against Biden the pro-choice vote won.
Those Supreme Court justices overreached in a big way. Not that knowing this is going to stop them.
But it just might energize voters across the country and make sure that the Democrats are not trounced to the extent we thought they might be a few months ago.
If it can happen in Kansas, it can happen anywhere.
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