What the Kansas Abortion Vote Means for a Post-Roe America
A Value Them Both campaign sign on fire. Photo by Ciara Wheatley, with permission.
Across Kansas, signs lined the streets. An ocean of purple and white broken up by an occasional blue and yellow, the roads were a vibrant representation of the debate splitting the state. The day before primary voting opened at Monticello Library in Johnson County, Kansas, a billboard went up facing the voting center. This display ensured anyone driving by would see the image of a woman and baby in the shape of a heart and the bolded words: “Vote Yes”. A local church projected the same image to a busy intersection, while clinic harassers outside of the Planned Parenthood in Overland Park held the same image up on signs, and every coffee shop bustled with talk of the upcoming vote on a ballot amendment against abortion. The vote ignited decade-old tensions in Kansas, and received national focus not just for its significance in Kansas, but as an indicator of the future of abortion in the Midwest as a whole.
With 95% of districts reporting as of Wednesday, August 3rd, the ballot amendment in Kansas failed to pass. Defeated by a 58.8% opposing vote from Kansas citizens, this victory proved that even in deep red states, when removed from extremely polarized legislatures, individual citizens place more value on bodily autonomy than party line. Yet, the ballot amendment was only the most recent effort in an extensive history of anti-abortion politics in Kansas, and a drop in the stream of recent abortion restrictions in the Midwest.
The proposed amendment was added to the 2022 Kansas primary ballot quickly after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was announced. If passed, it would ensure that no measure introduced by the state legislature could create a right to abortion, require government funding for abortion, or provide the state legislature the authority to pass laws regarding abortion. As it is a constitutional ballot amendment, not a bill or law, the future of abortion rights in Kansas was decided directly by citizens. Value them Both, the support campaign for the amendment, released a statement explaining the amendment as “a reasonable approach [that] will ensure Kansas does not remain a permanent destination for the most extreme and painful abortion procedures… the question before Kansans on August 2nd is clear: an unregulated abortion industry with no limits at all or the reasonable limits protected by the Value Them Both Amendment?"
The amendment would have reversed current case precedent in Kansas but, contrary to Value them Both’s statement, abortion was far from unregulated without it. In 2015, the Kansas Supreme court affirmed a constitutional right to abortion in the decision in Hodes and Nauser v. Schmidt. The case was tried in response to a Kansas Senate Bill, SB 95, which prohibited physicians from using a specific procedure necessary for safe second-trimester abortions. Two physicians, Hodes and Nauser, requested an injunction on the bill on the grounds of patient safety. Kansas Attorney General, Derek Schmidt, responded to this request with a refusal due to his belief that “no right to abortion exists under the Kansas constitution.” When taken to trial court, it was ruled that a right to abortion was in fact protected in the constitution, and that the bill failed the federal undue burden test, which requires courts to examine whether the benefits of abortion restrictions outweigh their burden on patients. After a subsequent decision by the Court of Appeals, the KS Supreme Court ruled in the favor of Hodes and Nauser.
Hodes and Nauser v. Schmidt, while landmark for the state, was a deviation from the largely anti-abortion politics of the last thirty years. Kansas has many other regulations in place, such as a ban on telemedicine abortion, targeted regulation of abortion provider (TRAP) laws, and required parental consent for minors; restrictions which embody only a small-part of the intense anti-abortion politics dotting the state’s history. In 1991, Kansas hosted the “Summer of Mercy”, a two-month period in which droves of pro-life organizations and protesters descended on the city of Wichita. One of the few places in the nation where clinics performed third-trimester abortions, Wichita became pivotal in abortion discourse, and the explosion of tensions there forever altered abortion politics in the state. After the Summer of Mercy, Kansas became the quintessential anti-abortion state. The ramifications of those months persisted almost twenty years later: Dr. George Tiller, one of the main abortions physicians in Wichita, was murdered by an anti-abortion extremist in 2009. Yet, even with this history, the 2015 affirmation of a constitutional right to abortion made Kansas one of the most lenient states in the Midwest.
Stringent prohibition of abortion existed in the region as early as 1825, in Missouri. This 1825 statute criminalized any attempt to induce abortion, a crime punishable by ten-years imprisonment. In 2019, Missouri introduced a bill which would return the state to this 19th-century precedent. The law contained a trigger-ban which required that immediately upon the SCOTUS decision “either [Attorney General] Schmitt or [Governor] Parson must issue statements that Roe has been overturned [and] implement the [abortion] ban.” Now a Class B felony, receiving a non-emergent abortion in Missouri in 2022 will result in five to fifteen years of imprisonment. This complete ban of the procedure was echoed in Oklahoma where Roe’s overturn resulted in Oklahoma’s Governor Stitt swiftly announcing an end to almost any access to the procedure. Upon this announcement, two out of the state’s four clinics immediately closed, and the others reported that they would cease offering the procedure as soon as the Governor signed the bill.
For women who still need access in these areas, even if they meet the two qualifying criteria for the procedure—when there is a “dead unborn child caused by spontaneous abortion," or miscarriage, or to remove an ectopic pregnancy,”—Kansas is the next closest option. In recent months, the pregnancy health clinic Trust Women in Wichita saw a significant increase in patients seeking abortion services from Oklahoma. After Texas’ original ban, the 2018 case which would become Dobbs v. Jackson, patients flooded into Oklahoma, and now individuals from both Texas and Oklahoma are turning to Kansas clinics. Clinics where, even before the ban, 44% of all abortions performed were for Missouri citizens. While Illinois and Colorado have explicitly protected the right to an abortion, and Nebraska’s legislature failed to pass a trigger ban by 2 votes, Kansas maintaining a right to abortion was essential not just for individuals in Kansas, but in providing a chance for access to women in several surrounding states.
On August 2nd, Kansas voters decided whether or not abortion access will continue in the state and, in effect—the Midwest. Understanding the importance of this vote means looking critically at the realities of abortion rights across the region. Further losing constitutional protection of abortion access would mean increased risks of poverty, death, and criminalization of women/people with uterus’, along with decreased access to safe medical care. Even before the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the precarious state of abortion rights meant inequitable access to fundamental rights for many. By failing to codify Roe into law while they had the chance, elected officials were able to use abortion rights as leverage, and watch as an issue of individual choice became further politicized. Securing reproductive care for any person with a uterus only begins with abortion legalization, but, for now, by keeping abortion in Kansas, voters have protected the rights of their own citizens, but extended access to many who’ve already lost it.
Though the outcome of the Kansas vote sets a promising precedent, there are numerous other states where the Midterms will be essential for abortion rights, including: California, Michigan, Kentucky, and Vermont (with similar ballot measures to amend the sate constitution), and Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia (where highly competitive races on the ballot could determine abortion access down the line). Abortion access is constantly evolving, and as with the Kansas vote, the choices made this election season will be essential in understanding a post-Roe America.
Claire Burke (BC’25) is a sophomore at Barnard College from Shawnee, Kansas. She is studying Political Ecology, Human Rights, and Latin American Studies. You can find her serving coffee, painting at obscure hours, and looking for nature in NYC.