If there were two votes that sent shockwaves through the US this year, they were in Kansas and Kentucky, and they were both about abortion. The former, the first direct vote on abortion to be brought to the public since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, by anti-abortion Republicans in a deeply red state, was defeated by considerably more than half the electorate (59% of the vote).
The latter, in Kentucky, seemed an even harder bet: Kentucky is one of the 16 US states that, before the November vote, seemed to have more support for banning abortion than protecting it, according to analysis by the New York Times from May. It also already had an outright ban in place. But the ballot initiative, also brought by anti-abortion campaigners, failed to pass, with 52% of voters rejecting an amendment to say there was no explicit protection for abortion rights in the state constitution.
