Abortion rights were on the ballot in the 2022 midterms and, in a stunning rebuke to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, voters showed up in droves to show support. The message was clear: abortion must be protected. Here are the results from states where abortion was on the ballot yesterday.
Kentucky rejected an anti-abortion amendment.
In Kentucky, voters defeated a ballot measure to remove any constitutional protections for abortion. The amendment would have made it practically impossible to challenge anti-abortion legislation in the court system. The ACLU tweeted about the victory: “Voters in Kentucky made it clear: Abortion is our RIGHT — and politicians don’t belong in our private medical decisions.”
Vermont approved an amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.
Vermont passed an amendment that explicitly protects abortion rights at the state level. Amendments like this are extremely important since the Supreme Court wiped away the constitutional right to an abortion, effectively leaving the issue to elected officials in the states.
California amended its state constitution to guarantee the right to abortion and contraception.
In California, voters are projected to approve the ballot measure known as Proposition 1, which was also a direct response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling. The language added to the California Constitution states that “the state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions, which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives.”
Michigan supported a measure to protect abortion rights.
Michigan voters approved Proposal 3, enshrining the right to abortion in the Michigan Constitution. “Today, the people of Michigan voted to restore the reproductive rights they’ve had for 50 years,” Darci McConnell, a spokeswoman for Reproductive Freedom for All, told the Michigan news site Bridge Michigan. “Proposal 3’s passage marks an historic victory for abortion access in our state and in our country—and Michigan has paved the way for future efforts to restore the rights and protections of Roe v. Wade nationwide.”
North Carolina did not elect a Republican supermajority.
Republicans in North Carolina did not win enough seats in the legislature to create a supermajority, which would’ve overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto power over anti-abortion legislation rights. As one of only a few states in the South where abortion is legal, North Carolina has become critical access point for people seeking abortions in the region. Caroline Kitchener, who covers abortion for The Washington Post, tweeted: “It’s hard to overstate the significance of this result for abortion access. North Carolina is a major destination for people from antiabortion states right now. The number of abortions there have increased more since Dobbs than any other state in the country.”
Montana is still waiting for results on its “born alive” regulation.
If passed, the measure on Montana’s ballot would enact what anti-abortion rights groups call the “born alive” measure, requiring health care providers to treat any infants “born alive after an induced labor, cesarean section, attempted abortion, or another method” as legal persons, according to Ballotpedia. LR-131, a referendum for the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, also imposes criminal penalties on health care providers not taking “medically appropriate and reasonable actions” to do everything in their power to keep newborns with no chance of survival alive for as long as possible. Doctors and nurses in Montana have spoken out against the proposed measure, saying it would do more harm than good to parents and that it would also prevent them from doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. Elizabeth Nash, who tracks state policy at the Guttmacher Institute, told The 19th that the law is a thinly veiled attempt to “try to couch abortion as dangerous and providers as unscrupulous. And in turn when you stigmatize abortion, you make it much easier to restrict and even ban it.”
Rose is a Senior Editor at ELLE overseeing features and projects about women's issues. She is an accomplished and compassionate storyteller and editor who excels in obtaining exclusive interviews and unearthing compelling features.
