Voters in multiple states passed measures to enshrine abortion rights. Vermont, Michigan, and California delivered big blows to conservative agendas bent on dismantling reproductive rights.
The votes were a massive rebuke to the crackdown on reproductive freedoms and the anti-abortion push taking place across the U.S.
Vermont became the first state in America to protect abortion rights in its state constitution. It called its result first of the states after its voters resoundingly backed a ballot initiative by a huge margin.
In Michigan, a ballot initiative passed to secure a constitutional right to abortion. This means meaning the state will now escape the imposition of a 1931 abortion ban that was on the books. Michigan is now officially the first in the U.S. to fight off a pre-existing abortion ban with a ballot proposal, named Proposal 3.
Campaigners across the country see the move as a historic win and a possible road map for other states.
“Proposal 3’s passage marks a historic victory for abortion access in our state and in our country – and Michigan has paved the way for future efforts to restore the rights and protections of Roe v Wade nationwide,” Darci McConnell, the communication director for Reproductive Freedom For All, wrote in a statement.
In California, voters were on track to overwhelmingly pass a measure to enshrine into the state’s constitution the right to abortion and contraception.
The outcome in Vermont was expected. The east coast state was so pro-choice that even the Republican governor backed Proposal 5. The proposal, brought by pro-choice advocates, means the constitution now determines that an “individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course”.
California’s Proposition 1, meanwhile, was positioned as a direct response to the U.S. supreme court’s decision to overturn decades of established access and thrust the country into turmoil.
Californian voters’ decisive support for Prop 1 will further enhance the state’s reputation as a haven for reproductive care just as restrictions – and political divisions – deepen across the country.
These wins deliver more blows for Republicans who are increasingly finding that, when put to a vote, Americans frequently do not agree with a sweeping agenda to dismantle abortion rights.
More than a dozen states have effectively outlawed abortion access altogether in the wake of that June decision, and Republican state lawmakers have advanced more restrictive anti-abortion laws, upending abortion access for millions of Americans and forcing the closure of dozens of clinics across the U.S.
But in August, voters in Kansas shocked the country – and a multimillion-dollar anti-abortion campaign – with the results of America’s first referendum on abortion rights after the high court’s landmark ruling. Kansas voters rejected a Republican state constitutional amendment to slash abortion protections.
Instead, Kansas voters underscored the deep unpopularity of political interference with bodily autonomy and reproductive healthcare, triggering a wave of midterm election campaigns that centered on the high stakes for abortion rights.
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