In a significant triumph for pro-choice organizations, the conservative US state of Kansas chose in a referendum to maintain abortion rights.
The majority of voters stated they did not want the state constitution to be changed to say there is no right to abortion.
Since the US Supreme Court permitted states to outlaw the practice, it had not been put to a vote before.
If the outcome of the election had been different, lawmakers may have taken action to further restrict or outlaw abortion in the state.
Separately, primaries were held on Tuesday in the states of Michigan, Arizona, Missouri, and Washington, which served as a test of former President Donald Trump‘s clout inside the Republican party as he makes noises about a potential third bid for the presidency in 2024.
Since the US Supreme Court invalidated Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal throughout the country, two months ago, the Kansas ballot issue has been eagerly awaited.
According to projections, Kansans supported the state’s constitutional right to abortion access by a margin of more than 60%.
The outcome will be viewed as a reflection of the issue’s popularity before the national midterm elections on November 8, in which Democrats are vying to keep control of Congress.
The outcome, according to US Vice President Joe Biden, “shows that most Americans think that women should have access to abortion,”
At a watch party in Overland Park, Kansas, one voter, Taylor Hirth, sobbed as she celebrated the outcome with her nine-year-old daughter.
She told the BBC: “The idea of my kid ever being pregnant and me being powerless to prevent it infuriates her since she was raped.”
“We have worked so hard to get the vote out here that I never imagined it would happen. Republicans miscalculated our might.”
On a primary election day when Republicans often exceed Democrats by a two-to-one margin, Kansas authorities reported that overall voter turnout was much higher than anticipated.
In the final month before the election, when emotions were high, a Catholic church and a statue of the Virgin Mary were vandalized with red paint and a pro-choice message.
Some Kansans got false text messages the day before the election pushing people to “vote yes” to defend their right to choose, but this was untrue. Twilio, a tech business, announced that it had removed the sender’s anonymity from its system.
Despite being a highly conservative state, Kansas has less restrictive abortion laws than many other states with Republican governors.
Other restrictions, such as an obligatory 24-hour waiting time and mandatory parental approval for children, apply to the termination of pregnancies up to 22 weeks.
Republicans who oppose abortion dominate the state’s legislature, while Laura Kelly, the governor of the Great Plains state, is a Democrat. She had cautioned that altering Kansas’ state constitution would send the state “back into the dark ages.”
Since the Supreme Court’s ruling on June 24th, more than a dozen states with Republican governors have taken steps to outlaw or significantly restrict abortion.
However, the right to an abortion is guaranteed by state constitutions in 10 US states, including Kansas. These provisions can only be changed via popular vote.
Other states, like Vermont and California, are conducting elections in November to strengthen abortion provisions in their state constitutions.
• The state where a vote on abortion is scheduled
Separate elections were held in the states of Washington, Arizona, Missouri, Michigan, and Arizona. Which party will dominate the upper chamber of Congress in 2017 will be decided by two of the nation’s most bitterly contested gubernatorial and Senate elections.
Trump sponsored a group of candidates that have emphasised his unfounded assertions that widespread voting fraud caused him to lose the November 2020 presidential election.
Tudor Dixon, a TV personality backed by Trump in the contest for governor of Michigan, won the Republican primary and will face Gretchen Whitmer in the general election.
Vote tallies were still being completed for other Trump-backed candidates, such as Blake Masters for the Arizona Senate and Kari Lake for governor.
Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona state house, appeared to be in danger of losing his position to a candidate endorsed by Mr. Trump when he testified before a congressional committee about Mr. Trump’s attempts to rig the 2020 election.
