A state once considered to be a national model for the rise of cultural conservatism, and for the growing trend of middle class Americans to vote against their own interests, turned that reputation on its head last Tuesday night — at least on the issue of protecting abortion rights.
Kansas primary voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to allow for abortion bans.
It turns out that conservative voters were not nearly as eager to block abortion access as the state’s Republican legislature was. Roughly 60% of Kansas voters supported preserving abortion rights. In blunter terms, the pro-abortion rights side won a larger percentage of votes than Donald Trump, who carried Kansas by roughly 15 percentage points in 2020.
The referendum results are a resounding victory for abortion rights advocates in Kansas and a profound rejection of restrictions that came into effect after the Supreme Court’s decision in June to dismantle the constitutional protections afforded by Roe v. Wade. It was also a victory for women in every neighboring state where abortion is illegal — Nebraska, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa — who now have a relatively nearby safe haven to pursue the option.
Lastly, it was a win for the majority of Americans who still believe that some degree of bodily autonomy is a human right.
The Kansas results are proof that the radical laws passed by anti-abortion politicians across the nation are woefully out of touch with what mainstream voters want, which is at least some rights for pregnant women to make choices that affect their bodies, their families, including other children, and their destinies. Texas voters are no different. A University of Texas poll in July found only 15% of Texans support a complete ban on abortion access. There is even some evidence that Latino voters in our state, often assumed to be an anti-abortion monolith, believe the procedure should be legal in most cases.
The fact that nearly 50% of Kansas voters showed up to vote in this summer election — 60% higher than the 2018 primary — should be a loud wake-up call to Texas Republicans on the ballot this fall. We’ve all heard the well-worn axiom that Texas isn’t so much a Republican state as it is a non-voting state. Now Democrats might finally have a chance to build a sturdy enough coalition of voters to prove that one critical issue, or perhaps two if you count gun safety, can transcend partisanship.
After all, Texas — the state that birthed the Roe v. Wade case legalizing abortion — has since become ground zero for the national assault on abortion rights. The state in 2021 passed an unprecedented abortion ban after six weeks, before many women even know they’re pregnant. The law is so gratuitously oppressive it includes a bizarre bounty hunter provision allowing private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion.
Kansas still has a 22-week abortion ban, but it has also become a crucial hub for abortion procedures in the Midwest, especially after states such as Texas and Oklahoma have now essentially banned the procedure. But after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, the state’s five abortion clinics could barely keep up with the demand. In Texas alone, providers were performing close to 55,000 procedures per year, even before the ban passed in September.
Having one regional island of abortion access is an untenable reality for most Texans. Whether pro-choice Texas candidates who support abortion rights can effectively appeal to voters on this issue is still an open question. Kansas is a mostly white state with a large evangelical constituency; Texas is a fast-growing, large state with a globally competitive economy and one of the most ethnically diverse populations in the nation.
Texas also won’t have an abortion rights ballot referendum to drive turnout. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke said he would work to repeal the abortion ban if elected, a promise that will be hard to keep unless his coattails are long enough to carry other down-ballot, pro-choice candidates to victory. But O’Rourke does have a useful foil in Gov. Greg Abbott, a politician widely scorned for Texas’ severe rollback of abortion access under his watch. That Abbott’s position on abortion rights has shifted — before signing Texas’ abortion ban, Abbott said in 2014 he supported abortions for up to 20 weeks of pregnancy — presumably to satisfy the extremist wing of his party, could make him uniquely vulnerable.
It will be up to O’Rourke and other candidates who favor abortion rights to appeal to a broad spectrum of voters on this issue with a unifying message.
Something like: Freedom is a good thing. For speech rights. For gun rights. And for a woman’s right to control her own body. They all need limits. And they all need protection.
It worked for Kansas. Texans who agree have a chance to say so in the fall and prove that last Tuesday’s results in Kansas were a harbinger, not an outlier.
Houston Chronicle
