Kansans voted on a constitutional amendment to allow the banning of abortion. Polling had it as a close contest, with whoever got their base out likely to squeak out a win. The amendment got trounced, losing by 18 points. There is no good way to spin this. A lot of Red team voters had to have voted against the amendment. And this is ruby red Kansas.

Catching the car is not working out so well.

ETA: Ignore what people say. Watch what they do.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/03/2022 10:33AM by Brother Of Jerry.

Next thing you know, the news media will be saying that the Republican point of view isn't very popular. Or maybe Alito isn't welcome at parties.

I absolutely love it. It has got to have Republicans taking a second glance at things.

I doubt they will. They've allowed their party to be split in two with the most extreme voices running the show. That won't change any time soon because they've gone all in. The moderate voices have been silenced. And now they don't have enough of a base with which to continue their desire to control the entire country.

The best thing to come out of Kansas since "Dust in the Wind."

One-liners aside, Kansas isn't as deep red as it used to be. The state has a Dem governor, after all. But your greater point is correct; many R's (women and men) voted to keep the right to choose, and as a statewide referendum, it couldn't be gerrymandered away.

The Dem governor in Kansas only got elected because her opponent, Kris Kobach, was too extreme even for Kansas. She got endorsed by a lot of prominent Kansas Republicans who found Kobach just beyond the pale.

I'm glad and hopeful, but this is not over yet. I believe Idaho citizens would have voted for the most extreme abortion laws possible if on the ballot.

Right now our Idaho legislators and governor are lashing out against "gov'ment overreach" since Idaho is being sued by the government for not allowing life saving measures. Honestly, Idaho folks are A-OK with women dying due to no reproductive medical care intervention allowed. They don't care if Vets die or if children suffer either, so I'm not surprised.

The federal suit against Idaho also made the news this morning. There is a 1986 federal law that requires a certain level of emergency room care, and the claim is that the Idaho anti-abortion law violates that law, which has precedence over state law.

The commentator said this story is not nearly as flashy as the Kansas result, but he thought the suit had an good chance of succeeding.

In any case, the can of worms has most definitely been opened.

New way of wagging the dog.

If this were in Utah, the legislature would within days call a special session and override the initiative.

Or am I mistaken?

Yep. They'd find a way to do what they want.

This required a constitutional amendment, which a legislature can’t overrule. Tougher hill to climb.

You have to stop looking at things as red or blue. Who you hear most in the media is the extremists on either side and they don’t represent the mass majority in the middle.

Most people don’t talk about abortion. Most think a woman should have the choice to go talk to a doctor in private and make tough decisions on their own with the government staying out of it. They also hate late term abortions, the celebration of abortions, big money being made off of abortions and selling the baby parts.

Abortion is a handy knife to twist when you want to divide a population and get it fighting amongst itself. The thing is, it’s not working. It’s going to settle out at the state level where in most states abortion is going to still be legal.

The loud mouthed extreme right isn’t going to get it’s way in most states; neither is the loud mouthed far left going to get theirs. The pendulum always swings back and who wins long-term is the middle.

Rubicon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You have to stop looking at things as red or blue.
> Who you hear most in the media is the extremists
> on either side and they don’t represent the mass
> majority in the middle.

You are wrong on this issue. Abortion rights are supported strongly by over 2/3 of American voters. The right to choose is a centrist issue, and portraying it as anything else is incorrect.


------------------
> Most people don’t talk about abortion.

Oh yes they do.


-------------------
> Abortion is a handy knife to twist when you want
> to divide a population and get it fighting amongst
> itself.

That's what the supreme court just did. The vast majority of Americans favored Roe and the supreme court adopted an extreme position--your mischaracterization of the state of public opinion notwithstanding--and the three kangaroos did exactly what they were appointed, by extremists, to do.


--------------------
> The thing is, it’s not working. It’s
> going to settle out at the state level where in
> most states abortion is going to still be legal.

Well, that's not quite right. You and Henry Bemis assert that Dobbs relegated abortion to the states. But it did not. It stripped abortion rights of their constitutional status, which means they will be defined through normal legislative processes, state and federal. Congress can and will legislate much of the new regime--and conceivably all of it--unless the supreme court steps in and says some of the abortion issues are beyond federal and/or state power because they have some sort of constitutional status after all--in which case the court will be creating new rights de novo, just as they accuse the Roe court of having done fifty years ago.

And since the Dobbs decision was based on the right to privacy, it's only a matter of time before states do what Thomas urged: challenging other privacy-based rights like those to gay marriage, oral and anal sex in heterosexual relationships, and contraception.

What does that mean? That we have just entered a period in which the states and Congress will fight over control of abortion and other rules, and every time the party controlling Congress or the states changes, the laws will be revised. Moreover many if not most of the state and national rules will go back to the supreme court time and again.

The states will be bit players in a decades-long process of determining abortion rights in the United States.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/03/2022 06:24PM by Lot's Wife.

I think the can of worms is going to turn out to be impressively large.

States will be trying to restrict interstate travel. They will be trying to restrict interstate abortions, which if done for a fee constitutes interstate commerce, control of which clearly belongs to Congress.

Then there is interstate mailing of pharmaceutical abortion pills, which was already the primary method of abortion in the US, and likely to become much more so.

Georgia just made a fetus a legal tax deduction for state income tax purposes. If the woman then gets an abortion, can she be charged with filing a fraudulent tax document? I think yes. Will miscarriages be investigated as possible tax fraud? Mmmmm, dunno.


Oh, the circus has just begun. This vote was such a big deal because people truly did not know how it would play out. Now we only have this one data point, but it is a doozie,

Après Dobbs, le déluge.

C’est vrai

While I agree with you generally, Rubicon,...

"They also hate late term abortions, the celebration of abortions, big money being made off of abortions and selling the baby parts."

Everyone hates late term abortions, because they are only ever done when someone wants a baby very badly, has gone through a great deal of the pregnancy and something has gone terribly wrong. It is a heart wrenching decision that is the worst of all abortion scenarios. This is not decided by anyone on a whim. Everyone hates abortions and they don't celebrate them. It represents a failure in every way and women are harshly judged for it whether or not she has ANY fault for the situation. And no one and I mean no one sells baby parts.

So please don't spread this as a reason why people don't think women should have a choice in the matter. This is not a far left dream or problem except in the minds of those who still want to judge women harshly.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/03/2022 02:49PM by Devoted Exmo.

I think Americans of all stripes are exhausted with the culture war. There are issues they feel strongly about and will not compromise on, but they also do not support what the state-level Republican-domianted states are doing, which is try to ram as much extreme social conservatism down America's throat as they can while we're still reeling from the multiple shocking rulings SCOTUS handed down this year with many more anticipated as the years roll on. I know conservatives want the big dub, but if it's not sustainable or defensible, then they're just toying with American lives to own the libs because it's popular with the base.

It is reported that following the late June Dobbs decision, 70% of Kansas citizens registering to vote were women. No guessing how they voted…

The forced-birth crowd made a lot of noise.

Kansans quietly voted.