A Kansas citizen holds up a ‘yes’ sign on election day on abortion. /
The population went to the polls to speak out about this practice on the same day that a court prohibited the termination of pregnancy in Kentucky
Since the US Supreme Court ruled against abortion last June, the States have in their hands to decide whether to make it illegal, limit it or allow the interruption of pregnancy. Missouri was the first to ban it, then Mississippi did the same, in Idaho the law will take effect on August 25, and yesterday it was the turn of Kansas, the first territory in the country to allow the decision to be made by citizens.
This vote is a test to pressure US public opinion at the polls for the first time after the Supreme Court invalidated the well-known ruling ‘Roe vs. Wade’, which since 1973 protected the right of women to decide on their own bodies. Polling stations in Kansas closed at 7:00 p.m. local time (2:00 a.m. in Spain).
Advocates for the right to terminate pregnancy criticized the convoluted wording of the ballot’s only question, which read: “Because Kansans value both women and children, the Kansas State Constitution does not require that the government finances abortion and does not create or guarantee the right to abortion. To the extent permitted by the United States Constitution, the people, through their elected state representatives and state senators, may pass abortion laws, including, but not limited to, laws that take into account the circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, or circumstances of necessity to save the life of the mother. After that there are two answers, yes or no.
“They have done it on purpose to confuse people,” Anne Melia, 62, a volunteer from Kansas for Constitutional Freedom, denounced yesterday to the newspaper ‘The Washington Post’. And it is that voting ‘no’ meant that the right to abortion is supported, while a ‘yes’ would annul its protection.
In parallel, an appeals court yesterday banned abortion in Kentucky, agreeing with Republican prosecutor Daniel Cameron, who insisted on continuing to work to give “guarantees to women and unborn children.”
Also yesterday, the US Department of Justice filed the first lawsuit against a State since the Supreme Court’s resolution. The lawsuit is against Idaho, which in the law that will go into effect soon restricts access to abortion to patients who need to terminate their pregnancy to receive emergency medical treatment.