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.