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| Photo Credit: AP. |
Kansas voters Tuesday voted to preserve abortion rights by rejecting proposed ban to abortion in the mainly conservative state.
The move prevents the Republican controlled Legislature from making laws that could effectively ban the procedure.
The Supreme
Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade precedent, which provided abortion rights
to American women of reproductive age, empowered a number of conservative
states to propose laws to ban the procedure. Some states earlier put in place
so-called trigger laws to automatically ban abortion after the Supreme Court
ruling.
Kansas voters reject abortion ban
With most of
the votes counted, pro-abortion voters were leading by roughly 20 percentage
points, The Associated Press reports.
“This vote
makes clear what we know: the majority of Americans agree that women should
have access to abortion and should have the right to make their own health care
decisions,” President Joe Biden said in a statement following the vote, The Associated
Press reports.
Mr. Biden
who had called on Congress to “restore the protections of Roe” in federal law,
said “the American people must continue to use their voices to protect the
right to women’s health care, including abortion,” according to The Associated
Press.
“Kansans
bluntly rejected anti-abortion politicians’ attempts at creating a reproductive
police state,” said Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of Unite for
Reproductive & Gender Equity, according to The Associated Press. ”Today’s
vote was a powerful rebuke and a promise of the mounting resistance.”
Was the proposed abortion plan coming with a language that it does not grant the right o abortion?
The
Associated Press reported that the proposed amendment to the Kansas
Constitution would have added language saying that it does not grant the right
to abortion.
In 2019, the state Supreme Court decision
declared that access to abortion is a “fundamental” right under the state’s
Bill of Rights, which prevented a ban and potentially thwarting legislative
efforts to enact new restrictions.
A
spokesperson for the national anti-abortion group, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America,
Mallory Carroll criticized the vote describing it as “a huge disappointment”
for the movement and called on anti-abortion candidates to “go on the
offensive.”
“We must
work exponentially harder to achieve and maintain protections for unborn
children and their mothers,” she said in reference to the Supreme Court
decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.