Deep-red Kansas unleashed an abortion rights revolution. Watch out, Missouri lawmakers

I happened to be in Washington, D.C., that hot day in June when the U.S. Supreme Court released its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, declaring the Constitution of the United States did not guarantee a right to abortion. I gasped and unleashed a tirade of obscenities as the television commentator reported the news. I hurriedly showed up at the security-blanketed Supreme Court building, joining thousands of young people and middle-aged women like me who remembered life pre-Roe, each one of us engulfed in rage.

I knew my state’s abortion ban trigger law would go into effect by anti-abortion zealots within minutes of the decision. Horrified, I knew anyone who was pregnant would be forced by law in Missouri to give birth, without rape or incest exceptions, and that abortion providers would face felonies for trying to save a mother’s life in complicated cases, ectopic pregnancies be damned.

How did those of us with uteruses literally overnight become state property unless we were lucky enough to reside in an abortion rights sanctuary state? That night, millions of protesters across the country continued to pour into the streets, our fury exploding as we raised our fists in national unison: “Hell no, we won’t go back!”

But little did I know, less than two months later, my conservative home state of Kansas — where many years ago as a territory, people actually owned people — would unleash an extraordinary revolution.

Kansans shocked the nation — and frankly me — by soundly defeating a primary ballot initiative to alter their state constitutional right to abortion, which would have allowed the Legislature to outlaw it.

Voters in Wyandotte County, where I grew up, voted 74% in favor of abortion rights, but they weren’t alone. Suburban Johnson County, where many of my high school classmates migrated, voted 68% for abortion rights. Lyon County, home of my alma mater Emporia State University, voted 63% in support of abortion rights. The revolution tore through 14 rural red Kansas counties that had backed Donald Trump in 2020, with voters defiantly voting to save their personal rights to abortion.

The revolution, sparked by five anti-women Supreme Court justices, was a no-brainer for the record number of Kansans who voted almost 60% in favor of retaining ownership of their own bodies. Almost 50 years after the 1973 landmark Roe v Wade decision, Kansans of all faiths, party registration and ZIP codes cherished their previous constitutional protection to make their own pregnancy decisions without government intrusion. And they certainly weren’t going back.

We were warned the revolution was coming.

In poll after poll for years, most Americans insisted abortion should remain legal. They said it was abominable to force doctors to break their Hippocratic oath to “do no harm,” and evil to force children not old enough to vote or marry to birth a child of rape or incest. Americans insisted for decades that pregnancy decisions were ours alone and that abortion care is health care.

Evangelical Christianity and the Catholic Church haven’t been the only religious voices on abortion. A national network of clergy — including those of Reform, Conservative and Orthodox Judaism; Muslim denominations; and Methodist, United Church of Christ, African Methodist Episcopal, Unitarian, Presbyterian and Episcopal churches — are bound ethically and confidentially to support our religious freedom to make our personal choices and believe that a mother’s life is paramount.

Kansans didn’t need to be convinced their bodies belonged to themselves. Or that they needed to register en masse, then stand in line for hours to vote in record numbers, in a primary with an anticipated low turnout, to continue making their own private medical decisions. They knew what to do. And got it done.

Now what?

Abortion remains on the ballot Nov 8. Voters in California, Vermont, Montana and Kentucky will see similar abortion referendums, and others will see abortion reflected in crucial U.S. Senate, congressional and state races.

If Republicans gain control of Congress, they are guaranteed to retaliate by criminalizing abortion via a federal ban the first chance they get. Post-election, Republican-controlled state legislatures will be pressured by anti-abortion lobbies to outlaw the procedure, impose pregnancy-related interstate travel restrictions. or demand extradition in order to prosecute women and physicians.

Every candidate, regardless of party, must be asked: Should government be in charge of our private lives? If not, then we must know what they are willing to do to keep doctors out of prison and hospitals from allowing women to bleed out.

Force each candidate to take a public stand on abortion rights. Force each to take a stand on religious freedom.

Then dammit, show up to vote, just like those rural red voters who understood the consequences.

Thank you, my birth state of Kansas for launching the revolution.

It’s our turn next.

Stacey Newman, a former Missouri state legislator, is the executive director of ProgressWomen, a statewide social justice group.