
Less than two months after the US Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion, Kansas voters shocked the country – and a multimillion dollar anti-abortion campaign – with the results of America’s first referendum on abortion rights after the high court’s landmark ruling.
In August, voters rejected a Republican-proposed state constitutional amendment that would gut protections for abortion care in Kansas, a “red state” that went for Donald Trump in 2020, and which anti-abortion activists anticipated would kickstart a nationwide campaign to end legal abortion after the decades-long movement to gut Roe v Wade finally got what it wanted from the Supreme Court.