The Conservative, Red, Trump-Loving, State of Kansas Voted To Protect Abortion Rights
The Kansas abortion vote shows how extreme and out of touch the Supreme Court has become.
The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy, Toto, wheat fields, and tornadoes are some of the things that come to mind when people think of Kansas.
I know this because I grew up there, and when I moved away, these are the things people would ask me about, with a smile on their faces, when I told them where I was from.
Yes, the Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy is from Kansas, and the Wichita airport is full of Wizard of Oz memorabilia. And yes, Kansas does have endless prairies, lots of wheat, and some massively destructive tornadoes.
Kansas also has Republican voters. Lots of them. The last time Kansas voted for a Democratic president was in 1964 for Lyndon B. Johnson.
Though conservative, the state can sometimes surprise you and has been known to vote in the occasional Democrat for governor. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly won with 48% of the vote in 2018.
However, it is Trump country as Kansans overwhelmingly voted for Trump in 2020 by 56.1% to Biden’s 41.5%
Kansans voted in support of abortion rights
Amid these conservative tendencies, Kansas was the first state in the nation to vote on abortion rights after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to obtain an abortion.
The Kansas vote was for a proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed Kansas lawmakers more room to restrict or even ban abortions in the state.
The vote wasn’t even close. Kansans were overwhelmingly in favor of rejecting the amendment, by a 59 to 41 margin.
What does the Kansas vote mean for the rest of the country?
According to an article from the NY Times, by analyzing the Kansas outcome, they have predicted that 65% of voters nationwide (and more than 40 of the 50 states) would also vote to protect abortion rights.
The Times admits this is a rough estimate, but as they say, if 59% of voters support abortion rights in conservative Kansas, it has to be higher in the rest of the country.
Don’t expect the Supreme Court to stop at abortion
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion on the overturn of Roe v. Wade, that the majority court found there is no right to abortion as protected by the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
Thomas didn’t stop there. He said the court should reconsider these three decisions:
- Griswold v. Connecticut (married couples’ rights to contraception.)
- Lawrence v. Texas (determined same-sex sexual activity was legal in all the states.)
- Obergefell v. Hodges (the right for gay couples to marry.)
It doesn’t take much to read between those lines. Thomas is on a roll. Not content with merely preventing women from having an abortion, he would also like to overturn the rights to same-sex marriage, same-sex sexual activity, and birth control.
These are not the same opinions for the majority of Americans. A recent poll from Gallup shows that 71% of Americans are in support of same-sex marriage. And according to Pew Research, 61% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
As for birth control, it’s pretty safe to say, Americans want to keep their rights to contraception. FiveThirtyEight found that 90% of Americans said, “condoms and birth control pills should be legal in “all” or “most” cases.”
How did the Supreme Court move so far to the right?
It all began in 2016 when conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died. Obama was president at the time and chose to nominate Merrick Garland. Had Garland been nominated, the court would have switched to the left 5–4.
However, the Republican-controlled Congress denied a vote for Obama’s nominee. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said in 2016 in an opinion piece in the Washington Times, “It is today the American people, rather than a lame-duck president whose priorities and policies they just rejected in the most-recent national election, who should be afforded the opportunity to replace Justice Scalia.”
As we all know, Trump won the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton and was able to nominate conservative judge Neil Gorsuch to the court. And then, in 2018, Justice Anthony Kennedy retired, giving Trump another nomination, (and the nation a lot of controversies and great Saturday Night Live skits starring Matt Damon,) over conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
However, the court, though 5–4 in favor of conservatives, wasn’t always easy to predict as Chief Justice John Roberts sometimes sided with the liberals.
And the court hung on in this manner until the tragic passing of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ironically enough, McConnell suddenly had a change of opinion regarding lame duck presidents and Supreme Court nominees, rushing the vote for conservative Justice Amy Coney Barret one week before election day.
And now here America sits, dealing with a Supreme Court that is highly politically motivated and completely out of touch with the values and opinions of the majority of Americans.
Although my politics never did align with my fellow Kansanas when I lived there, and they align even less now, still, I love my home state and I’m deeply grateful for the rejection voters gave to the proposed constitutional amendment which could have led to the banning of all abortion in the entire state.
When a conservative state like Kansas votes in droves to keep abortion safe and legal, it highlights just how extreme and misaligned with the rest of the country, the U.S. Supreme Court has become.
