On August 2nd, 2022 the people of Kansas will be voting on a legislatively referred constitutional amendment.
A "yes" vote supports amending the Kansas Constitution to state that nothing in the state constitution creates a right to abortion or requires government funding for abortion and that the state legislature has the authority to pass laws regarding abortion.
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A "no" vote opposes amending the Kansas Constitution to state that nothing in the state constitution creates a right to abortion or requires government funding for abortion and that the state legislature has the authority to pass laws regarding abortion, thereby maintaining the legal precedent established in Hodes & Nauser v. Schmidt (2019) that there is a right to abortions in the Kansas Bill of Rights. (Ballotpedia)
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This amendment was placed on the ballot in August because the antiabortionists believed a low turnout election would favor their side. But that was before the Trump Supreme Court leaked the Alito draft, energizing the people supporting abortion rights. The actual decision, when it is handed down, will most likely energize them even more.
The Kansas amendment would pave the way for extreme abortion laws, like the one in Oklahoma. In 2011 Mississippi was very successful in fighting off a constitutional amendment.
The Mississippi "personhood" amendment on Tuesday's ballot which would have legally defined human life as beginning at the moment of fertilization failed and by a very wide margin.
Mississippi voters soundly rejected the constitutional amendment, with 58 percent voting "no" and only 41 percent voting "yes.”…..
(Opponents) warned that the amendment raised the possibility that miscarriages would need to be investigated. Besides abortion, some birth control methods would become illegal, they said.
What's more, the personhood amendment threatened to criminalize doctors who provide in vitro fertilization services because many embryos are never successfully implanted but instead eventually destroyed.
(NPR)