Abortion Access Wins Voter Support Even in Republican Kentucky

Voters in deep-red Kentucky delivered an abortion-rights victory Tuesday, defeating an effort to declare that there’s no constitutional right to end a pregnancy.

About 53% said no to the proposed change (Constitutional Amendment 2) even as they expanded Republican supermajorities in the state Legislature.

It was one of a handful of states using the ballot box to respond to the US Supreme Court’s rejection of the Roe v. Wade precedent. More than three-quarters of Vermont voters agreed to put “personal reproductive autonomy” into the state Constitution (Proposal 5), and similar measures to enshrine abortion rights won in Michigan and California.

Access to abortion also dominated the debate in a number of gubernatorial elections, including in Michigan, where Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) won re-election, and Pennsylvania, where Josh Shapiro (D) told his victory party that “a woman’s right to choose won” along with him.

“This is a seismic win for abortion rights in a battleground state,” Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement issued as the Michigan vote tally suggested that amendment would prevail. “When people can vote directly on abortion in a non-partisan ballot initiative, abortion rights win.”

Results were still too close to call in Montana, where voters considered a referendum requiring medical care be provided to infants who survive an attempted abortion. Activists were closely watching a sixth state, Alaska, where the possibility of curbing abortion depends on whether voters say yes to a constitutional convention.

Earlier this year, voters in Kansas soundly rejected, 59%-41%, an anti-abortion ballot measure there.

The Kentucky result will complicate pending litigation. The state Supreme Court is scheduled next week to hear a challenge to the state’s near-total abortion ban.

The justices will have to decide if existing protections for liberty and equal protection also include a right to abortion—something the state’s Democratic governor and Republican attorney general disagree on. Had Tuesday’s vote gone the other way, courts would have been blocked from holding that any constitutional provision provides that right.

In Vermont, Right to Life executive director Mary Beerworth said she expects the constitutional amendment will lead to legal challenges.

“Vermont legalized abortion a year before Roe v. Wade,” Beerworth said. “We’ve always had an uphill battle and we’re never going away.”

‘Sends a Message’

States with nearly a sixth of the nation’s population weighed in on abortion-related questions in Tuesday’s midterm election.

In Michigan, the stakes were high for an effort to add abortion rights to that state’s constitution (Proposal 3) because the Michigan Supreme Court is considering whether to block an abortion ban enacted in 1931. Voters approved the measure with nearly 56% of the vote, according to the AP.

A proposal to add a “fundamental right of privacy with respect to personal reproductive decisions” (Proposition 1) to the California Constitution also won with about 65% of the vote. Jodi Hicks, CEO and president of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, said placing protections into the state constitution would be insurance in case a federal abortion ban is ever enacted in Washington.

The vote “sends a message to policy makers across the country that this is a popular issue and people will not want abortion rights taken away,” she said.

In Montana, the ballot asked voters if they wanted to put into force a statute (LR-131) requiring doctors to attempt “life-saving care” for infants “born alive after an abortion.” Opponents of the measure were leading 53-47%, with an estimated 80% of the vote counted Wednesday morning, according to the Associated Press. An analysis from the anti-abortion Family Research Council shows 18 states have enacted such laws.

And in Alaska, voters had a chance to weigh in on holding a state constitutional convention (Ballot Measure No. 1). Advocates of abortion rights urged voters to say no, arguing that such a convention could endanger a state court ruling granting abortion rights.

(Planned Parenthood receives funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg. Michael Bloomberg is the majority owner of Bloomberg Government’s parent company.)