Kansas' vote on abortion rights turns spotlight on the next battlefront: State constitutions
Both sides in the abortion rights fight are taking to ballot initiatives and the courts to enshrine their positions in state constitutions after the fall of Roe.
Abortion rights advocates scored a major victory last week when Kansans voted overwhelmingly against stripping protections for reproductive rights from the state constitution. With voters fired up over the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Kansas is a success they hope to duplicate in numerous other states in November.
But abortion opponents consider the vote against the proposed constitutional amendment an outlier, and have forged ahead with more ballot initiatives and court challenges that target protections for abortion rights in other state constitutions.
“It’s going to be a state-by-state fight,” Helene Krasnoff, the vice president of litigation and law for Planned Parenthood, told NBC News.
The ballot measures and legal brawls are already underway, sparked by the Supreme Court's ruling on Mississippi's abortion ban. The ruling overturned the court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing a constitutional right to abortion, and the later Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision allowing states to impose some restrictions on abortion before fetal viability, so long as they did not constitute an “undue burden” on the right to the procedure.
The ballot question in Kansas was the first time since the Supreme Court ruling that voters could cast ballots on the issue.
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