https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Kansas_Value_Them_Both_Amendment
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I do not believe that most Republicans agree with banning abortion altogether. Even though the Amendment didn't ban abortion, I think the Kansas voters saw it in those terms. The Amendment lost because all of the Left voted against it, while the Right was split. It was not a "party line" vote.
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I think the move by a number of Republican legislatures to enact total bans on abortion is bad politics that will cost the Right votes. I happen to support abortion, but only because it strongly reduces crime and other social ills. However, I think the bulk of the Right wants to see highly restricted abortion only allowed for 8-12 weeks or so, as opposed to a complete ban. So by moving aggressively with bans, the R legislatures are over-correcting and pushing a greater degree of restriction than even a lot of Republicans/conservatives agree with.
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I do not agree with the prevailing Democrat talking point that the Kansas vote signals a blue backlash against Roe being overturned. I don't think Republicans are going to change their vote in the general election over abortion, however, I do think enacting total bans will cause some drag/backlash whereas the legislatures that have capped abortions at 8-15 weeks somewhere will not see backlash as those restrictions have broad support.
The language describing the amendment was gibberish and unreadable. That's literally it.
Yea, someone on TD posted a screenshot of the ballot question and I was like: WTF does that even mean? What were they even voting on?
https://patriots.win/p/15JAEzFLst/this-was-the-abortion-question-o/c/
Which is why I'm suggesting:
Was that question written to meet a required word count?
This is really the correct answer. Me, my family, and a lot of other people I know voted it down because we thought it was vague, open-ended, and too ripe for abuse of power. So we voted it down, even though a lot of those same people (including me) were glad that Roe got nuked. If there had been anything putting limits on the legislature to act unilaterally, or not making it likely that a full ban would be proposed immediately afterword (as the Yes Campaign got leaked admitting they wanted to do), it would have done better.
However, I am going to disagree with OP and say that I dont think this cost Republicans votes. Because at the same time, primaries were being done. In fact, some people thought it was intentional to try and get a more anti-abortion than usual vote (which obviously failed). But almost all of the local elections and primaries were won by MAGA type candidates, and the numbers in just the Republican primary were almost double those voting in the Dem primary.
And considering the Dems are misreading this result so bad and thinking that this means that for whatever reason people want unlimited abortion on demand (which is a far less popular position than even total abortion bans), they will run too far in the opposite direction and ruin their chances again.
It should have just said:
"Abortion is not a constitutional right in Kansas"
that's it.
I don't think it will cost R votes meaningfully in deep red states, I am only talking about "swing" or battleground states with abortion bans.
I agree with you that the Democrats are learning the wrong lesson from this and pushing abortion too hard.
I think that still would have faced an uphill battle. Like I said, a lot of people locally are indeed not pleased with the current limit of 22 weeks for abortion, but equally no one really favors a full ban. If there had been a ballet question saying that the limit was reduced from 22 weeks to, say, 16 weeks? Now THAT probably could have gotten some traction.
I still dont think it will. If you actually look at what people in said battleground states care about, their number one concerns are economic, not abortion related. The only people who care about abortion are already partisan, and already voting. All of the data in the aftermath of Roe being overturned showed that already, and nothing has changed so far.
If a swing state was holding an election, the votes for such a ban will probably cancel each other out, and the Swing voters will be saying "I literally do not give a shit. Who is going to fix the economy?"
It's amazing how, despite the supposed belief that abortion is this things that millions of people support, they need to resort to trickery in order to make it legal.
They never even allowed a popular vote on it to make it an amendment, or even a vote at state level to legalize it. That should tell you all you need to know about how popular it actually is.
That would do it.
I wonder if it was on purpose to make sure it didnt pass.
It's really not, unless you're literally retarded. It says there's no right to an abortion, and the legislature can pass laws about it.
The reality is that that majority of Americans support abortion in some form. The real disagreement tends to be on the cutoff date. You have one extreme right wing position of "All abortions must be banned - No matter what!" and another extreme left wing position of "Abortion should legal even if the child can survive outside the womb!"
Most Americans reject both of these positions, and either one would lose in an actual vote. For me, I'm glad Kansas voted it down. Health of the mother, rape/incest, and cutoff of like 12-14 weeks - Is what I'm onboard with.
Is abortion a right or isn't it?
...isn't the question.
The question isn't "is it a right", but "is it right".
That was literally the question though.
/u/Mangar's comment doesn't make sense. If he agrees with those reasonable limitations, then he would want the amendment passed so they can prosecute doctors who violate them. (aborting after his cutoff of 12-14 weeks)
If he's glad Kansas voted it down, then he must think abortion is a right. In that case you can not limit it in any way. (of course the government already does limit our rights in many ways - see 2A - but that doesn't mean it should)
I think that will be the eventual compromise. Neither side will get everything they want.
Even I'm not necessarily hardline with outright total bans. But things are definitely getting out of hand, and in my view, the most important thing that has to go is "abortion facilities receiving any taxpayer funding whatsoever."
If you were opposed to ritual child sacrifice, would you vote yes or no to this?
I'm against abortion. Life begins at conception. We know this because SCIENCE tells us that a new person with DISTINCT DNA separate from that of their mother is created through reproductive acts.
That said, I can't fucking understand that ballot question, holy shit.
Had to read the question 4 times to parse it, and normally I'm pretty good at reading legalese.
It's a two-part question with opposite clauses asking a singular yes or no answer. Question 1 is "Do you want to forbid the possibility of Kansas funding abortions via government spending?"
Question 2 is a complete new thought, regardless of Q1 (but you only get one answer), "Do you want to allow Kansas to play wild west with the law?" Also, it spelled "circumstnces" wrong so they're definitely professionals.
There's no answer valid for "Forbid funding, forbid playing wild west with laws", and there's no answer valid for "allow funding, allow playing wild west with laws".
It's the lawyeryest of lawyerspeak, where "yes" means "give them powers to do what they want law-wise without repercussion or oversight", and "no" means "give them powers to do what they want funding-wise without repercussion or oversight".
Although I don't agree with abortion and am firmly pro-life, this is fine. If a state votes this way, fine. I'd rather the states have power and reach an outcome I don't agree with than have the federal government make a blanket decision for all of us.
In comes the California retard with another hot take. I too read Freakonomics, the difference is I saw the lie when that metric was actually leaded gasoline not Abortion.
No, it’s not. Take note kids, this is how you deal with stupid. 1. Please prove that you have any fucking value compared to Thomas Sowell. 2. More “civilized” babies are aborted each year than black babies are. 3. Enabling degeneracy doesn’t stop degeneracy.
Congratulations, you’re a degenerate, go collect your free dose of Monkeypox!
It’s not what I think, it’s what you think. Why haven’t you committed suicide if you’re such an abject failure that you can’t even measure up to a negro?
I believe if they come back with a proper ballot question a year or two from now they can actually ban abortion, it just has to be phrased differently in a way voters can understand. That or a new governor/legislature can just pass a Texas/Missouri style bill instead of sending it to voters for a referendum.
Honestly, as someone from Kansas here, I definitely think a LOT of people were confused on it. Legit the "vote no" advertising was some of the most dishonest advertising I had ever seen. Every new commercial I would see on it I would literally take on the exact writing of the proposal and go through the commercial slowly and realize just how messed up that add was on completely misrepresenting it to outright claiming it was the opposite of what it actually said. One add would highlight the part about exceptions of "rape, and incest" [just highlight those words in the video] and then legit state those words meant the exact opposite of what it said in the bill. Just totally the opposite. This was one of the most common ads I saw. I legit must have seen it over 300 times no exaggeration.
On top of that, legit every single freakin' thing I did on every one of my devices had a "vote no if you vote yes it is evil" adds in front of it. I am not exaggerating even in the slightest. Every single youtube video, every single time I turned on my TV [I use a more of internet TV service] it would load up one of those ads. It was relentless.
In the other direction there was about a 3 day period I saw "Vote Yes" on it add, and it was a really lame add that I saw about 3 times over a 3 day period is all and then never again.
If I didn't educate myself on what the bill actually said, even as someone who is super anti-abortion [and I were just being lazy going off the ads to get info on the issue], I probably would have voted no based on the adds I saw cause I would almost swear it meant the opposite of what it meant.
I was also getting into constant text fights with people from Vote No groups who would text me, tell me the opposite of what the bill actually meant, and then ask what I would vote. Constantly to my phone this was happening.
I just never saw anything in the other direction correcting the issue, or how this was related to the Kansas Supreme Court why this was happening, or anything.
The OPPONENTS of the bill were called "Kansans for Constitutional Freedom" (funded by planned parenthood and other lib activists) That is a DELIBERATE MAGA-type name totally intended to confuse voters.
Totally. Most of the signs were like "Vote no to keep constitutional freedom!" in all the yards around towns. That is a good point you have. Tons of ballot confusion right there .