The first Americans to speak on abortion rights at the ballot box since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade did so this week resoundingly.
Freedom, real freedom — not the fake brand sold in Florida — won.
Access to reproductive health care won.
In a vote that reverberated around the country, the voters of deep-red Kansas upheld a woman’s right to an abortion, amending the state constitution to stop government officials from being able to ban the medical procedure.
The pro-choice victory should be a wake-up call for Florida’s cocky, patriarchal Republicans, who think they can trample over a woman’s most basic human right and remain politically unscathed.
But the politics of abortion may not be the low-hanging fruit they thought.
Kansas proved that not all Republican voters favor abortion bans, nor do they trust government to do right by women.
“Not your body, not your business,” said signs held up during marches. “Stand for Liberty. Vote No,” said others.
The referendum results are a rebuke to the far-right agenda the Florida GOP has wholeheartedly embraced without an iota of care.
Unafraid that voters might punish them come election time, Florida legislators and Gov. Ron DeSantis have chipped away at abortion rights during the past two legislative sessions. Overnight, it seems, diverse Florida landed on lists of states with the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.
Affirming abortion rights in Kansas
Significantly, Kansas voters affirmed their constitutional abortion rights despite opposition from the religious right and Republican Party campaign chicanery, including last-minute text messages giving voters false yes-no information about the ballot language.
Confusing voters with misleading and false advertising is a favored trick in Florida, too, where not only women’s rights are being curtailed but that of others. Blacks, whose history has been white-washed in school curricula. Gays and trans people being dehumanized for the sake of stoking cultural fires to win votes.
And the extreme right leading Florida isn’t stopping at anti-abortion, anti-minority legislation.
On Thursday, my-way-or-the-highway DeSantis suspended an elected official, Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren — a Democrat and vocal DeSantis critic — for signing letters saying he wouldn’t enforce laws limiting abortion and prohibiting sex reassignment treatment for minors.
In other words, more predictability from DeSantis.
But, as Kansas has shown, under the protection of the secrecy of the ballot, moderate Republicans are unwilling to hand over constitutional rights. And who knows? Maybe in Florida they also won’t surrender them to King DeSantis.
Hard to choose no choice when it’s your daughter, your granddaughter, your wife, your girlfriend, or your mistress who needs the abortion. And also consider that Florida isn’t as red as Kansas, where Republicans comfortably outnumber every other voter group.
Pro-choice & faith in Florida
Florida’s Republicans overestimate the acceptance of their beliefs among voters — and they underestimate the diversity of the state’s religious community.
Catholics for Choice, for example, actively show their rejection of DeSantis’ abortion restrictions and support Catholics like President Joe Biden, who stands with women’s right to make decisions about their bodies.
Other state religious leaders are doing more than talking.
An interfaith coalition of clergy — three rabbis, a Buddhist, a Unitarian minister, an Episcopal priest, and a Protestant pastor — filed individual lawsuits against Florida’s abortion restrictions, including the 15-week ban passed under bill HB5, which allows no exceptions for rape or incest.
The grounds: The law, crafted to please one set of Christians, violates their religious freedoms, which allow choice.
“[Religious] people do believe in freedom of choice,” one of the plaintiffs, the Rev. Laurie Hafner, at Coral Gables Congregational United Church of Christ, told me Thursday, jubilant over the Kansas vote.
“It’s the American way.”
She should know. She’s a Midwesterner.
“I know Kansas. Friends in Kansas were fearful and wouldn’t talk about it [their vote] for fear of retribution,” Hafner said. “But, in that quietness, they went to polls. The majority of people believe a woman has the right to choose what happens to her body.”
In a newsletter to her parishioners, Hafner explained the lawsuit.
“It is our belief that this new law, passed by lawmakers during the 2022 legislative session and signed into law by our governor, violates constitutional freedom of speech, the free exercise of religion, and the constitutional separation of church and state,” she wrote. “I believe with everything in me that God has given us free will, and that we are to use that free will honorably, lovingly, prayerfully and thoughtfully, in relationship to our God, our faith, and our family.”
Abortion ban in Florida?
Given recent history, the concerns that drove Kansans to the polls are the same for Floridians this November.
There may be no referendum here, but abortion is on the ballot.
The prospect that a bold, reelected DeSantis with the Legislature at his command will ban abortion in Florida is real. Will the issue backfire and turn into his election poison pill?
It’s doubtful, given the more than $100 million he has raised from the rich and powerful who support him and can get abortions when they want them. But perhaps if centrist Congressman Charlie Crist — who has been selling a “pro-choice and pro-life” message — wins the Democratic nomination, DeSantis might not be the shoo-in he thinks he is.
Midterm voter turnout, notoriously low, will be key — but again, look to Kansas’ record-high turnout, driven by abortion politics, for hope.
In Kansas, democracy prevailed against huge odds, affirming an important human right, a fine thing to behold.
May these winds also blow through pink Florida this fall.
____
