Votes are still being counted, but what’s looking like a margin of almost 20%, Kansans voted to keep abortion legal in their state. As I understand it, the Kansas constitution protects a woman’s reproductive rights, so an amendment to the Kansas state constitution which would have removed that protection was put on the ballot. Kansans overwhelmingly rejected it. This is Kansas. One of our blood red states where President Biden lost by almost 15% of the vote in 2020.
Meanwhile, in Indiana…
SB 1 moved to the Indiana House of Representatives where it was sent to the Committee on Courts and Criminal Code rather than the Committee on Public Health. Normally committee assignments are routine business and not challenged. Apparently there was a procedural move to vote on sending it to the the Committee on Public Health which failed on a mostly party line vote, 27-65. The committee amended the bill to reduce the time during which raped kids can get an abortion from 12 weeks to 10, added an exception to allow abortions where necessary to prevent a substantial permanent impairment of the physical health of the woman, deleted the notarized affidavit requirement, and eliminated abortion clinics as places where the procedure can be performed. The bill passed out of committee, as amended, on an 8-5 vote.
Once again, nobody likes this thing. The pro-choice camp obviously doesn’t have a lot of patience with state legislators moonlighting as gynecologists while the pro-life advocates with unnuanced “abortion = murder” beliefs are frustrated over any exceptions at all. Indiana legislators should probably take note of the Kansas vote to get an idea of how Hoosiers will react if they proceed down this path.