Quote of the Day

Today, voters in Kansas overwhelmingly rejected an amendment to their state constitution that would have stripped it of protections for abortion rights. With 86% of the vote in, 62% of voters supported abortion protections; 37% wanted them gone. That spread is astonishing. Kansas voters had backed Trump in 2020; Republicans had arranged for the referendum to fall on the day of a primary, which traditionally attracts higher percentages of hard-line Republicans; and they had written the question so that a “yes” vote would remove abortion protections and a “no” would leave them in place. Then, today, a political action committee sent out texts that lied about which vote was which.

Still, voters turned out to protect abortion rights in such unexpectedly high numbers it suggests a sea change.

It appears the dog has caught the car, as so many of us noted when the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision on June 24. Since 1972, even before the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, Republican politicians have attracted the votes of evangelicals and traditionalists who didn’t like the idea of women’s rights by promising to end abortion. But abortion rights have always had strong support. So politicians said they were “pro-life” without ever really intending to overturn Roe v. Wade. The Dobbs decision explicitly did just that and has opened the door to draconian laws that outlaw abortion with no exceptions, promptly showing us the horror of a pregnant 10-year-old and hospitals refusing abortion care during miscarriages. Today, in the privacy of the voting booth, voters did exactly as Republican politicians feared they would if Roe were overturned.

But this moment increasingly feels like it’s about more than abortion rights, crucial though they are. The loss of our constitutional rights at the hands of an extremist minority has pushed the majority to demonstrate that we care about the rights and freedoms that were articulated – however imperfectly they were carried out – in the Declaration of Independence.

– Heather Cox Richardson
via Facebook
August 2, 2022

Related Off-site Links:
Voters in Kansas Decide to Keep Abortion Legal in the State, Rejecting An Amendment – Dylan Lysen, Laura Ziegler, and Blaise Mesa (NPR News, August 3, 2022).
Landslide! Kansas Voters Protect Abortion Rights in State Constitution, Reject GOP-Led Ballot Measure – Democracy Now! (August 3, 2022).
“Enormous Victory”: Kansas Voters Resoundingly Defeat Anti-Abortion Amendment – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, August 3, 2022).
Progressives See Midterm Hopes Rise on Kansas Voters’ Defense of Abortion Rights – Brett Wilkins (Common Dreams, August 3, 2022).

UPDATE: The Very Good People of Kansas – Robert Reich (Common Dreams, August 4, 2022).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Progressive Perspectives on the Overturning of Roe v. Wade
• Heather Cox Richardson: It’s Up to Us to Prove That Democracy Is Still a Viable Form of Government
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – July 28, 2022
• Republicans Pose an “Existential Threat” to American Democracy
• The Big Switch
• The Republican Party in a Nutshell
• Republicans Don’t Care About American Democracy
• Heather Cox Richardson on Combating the Republican Party’s “Rigging of the System”

Image: Nick Anderson.