The Abortion Rights Sweep
Terry H. Schwadron
Nov. 10, 2022
While other election messages may have been mixed, the judgment to sustain a right to abortion was a clarion call.
In a rebuke to the Supreme Court decision on federal abortion rights, voters in five states approved ballot measures in support of abortion by substantial margins. And, in a bit of rebuke to campaigners, pollsters, media pundits and Republicans generally, there was something yet more fundamental about protecting perceived rights than there was solely anger about inflation.
In California, Vermont and Michigan, voters approved referendum items to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitutions. In otherwise conservative Montana and Kentucky, voters rejected measures that would have restricted access to reproductive care.
The Supreme Court decision this year asserted that the 50 years of legal abortion rights were based incorrectly on a constitutional clause and left it to the states to decide, pointing to a patchwork of contradictory laws and endless personal stories of heartache.
Over the summer, voters in politically red Kansas stunned with a vote to reject a ban on abortion in that state, and Republicans have been lining up to force a vote nationally to bar abortion.
This week’s vote should be a clear sign even to Congress and Senate Republicans that voters want to retain rights to abortion as a matter of personal decision, and that restrictive laws need to acknowledge that there are exceptions to any rule that need inclusion.
Support for strict abortion laws was a feature of most Republican congressional campaigns, with mixed results around the country. Democrats across the country made retention of abortion rights a part of their public platforms.
While it has proved difficult to identify exactly how much abortion was mattering to voters, there was no question that the issue was a big factor in pushing turnout. Abortion rights advocates have consistently reported that voter registrations of younger voters and women zoomed after the Supreme Court decision.
What’s still hard to understand, then, is the speed and intensity with which Republican-majority state legislatures have moved to restrict abortion access in about half of all states. Some even still threaten to turn abortion into criminal charges and are promoting citizen enforcement of abortion laws against anyone who helps drive or aid an abortion appointment.
The measures
Planned Parenthood tweeted that “the message is clear” from voters that “The majority of voters don’t want politicians deciding personal medical decisions for them.”
Still, each measure on Tuesday was a little different.
Vermont became the first state to explicitly enshrine abortion rights into its state constitution after voters approved their ballot measure.
In Michigan, voters rejected Republicans plans to enforce a 1931 law banning abortions in all cases except to save the life of a mother with a ballot measure that would include abortion rights into the state constitution.
Hours later, in California, the vote was more than 2-t0–1 to add abortion rights to the state constitution.
Kentucky voters rejected a ballot measure that would declare there is no right to an abortion in the state constitution, like the Kansas measure that was rejected. In Montana, voters said no to a ballot measure to approve the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. The law would have declared any fetus or embryo that survives an abortion is a legal person and criminalized doctors who do not try to save the life of a “born alive” infant.
Importantly, exit polls showed that voters were saying that they were dissatisfied or “angry” about the abortion decision by about 60 percent to 40 percent.
If our politicians stop to listen, maybe they should be separating opinions about how Americans should be living their lives and the laws that tell us what we cannot do.
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