Citizens will go to the polls this Tuesday as US justice bans pregnancy interruption in Kentucky to give “guarantees” to women and unborn children
Since the US Supreme Court ruled against abortion last June, states have been left to decide whether to make it illegal, restrict or allow it. Missouri was the first to ban it. Then it was Mississippi. Today it’s Kansas’s turn, the first area in the country where residents can decide during the polls whether they want to protect the right to termination of pregnancy. Tuesday’s vote focuses on a 2019 state Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing access to abortion until the 22nd week of pregnancy.
This vote is a test of how a traditionally conservative state reacts to the annulment of the 1973 ruling that protected women’s right to decide about their own bodies. Other areas, such as California and Vermont, will debate bringing abortion protection to the polls in the fall.
Defenders of the right to terminate pregnancy have criticized obstacles to the vote, such as the complicated wording in the single question on the vote that confuses citizens. The text reads: “Because Kansans value both women and children, the Kansas state constitution does not require the government to fund abortion and does not create or guarantee the right to abortion. To the fullest extent permitted by the Constitution of the United States, the people, through their elected representatives of the state and senators, may pass abortion laws, including, but not limited to, laws that take into account the circumstances of pregnancy as a result of rape or incest, or circumstances necessary to save life. from the mother”. Then there are two answers, yes or no.
The complexity of the question has led to rejection among voters. “They did it on purpose to confuse people because a ‘no’ vote means you support the election,” Anne Melia, 62, a Kansas volunteer for Constitutional Freedom, told The Washington Post. “It is misleading and false. And there are a lot of intense feelings on both sides,” the woman adds. That is, voting ‘no’ means supporting the right to abortion, while voting ‘yes’ would negate its protection.
Kansas has been a bastion of abortion activism for years. During the ‘Summer of Mercy’ protests in 1991, thousands of anti-abortion protesters gathered in Wichita and were arrested in sit-ins and blockades of abortion clinics. And in 2009, an anti-abortion extremist murdered George Tiller, one of the few third-trimester abortion providers.
On the other hand, a U.S. appeals court has banned abortion in Kentucky, in line with Republican District Attorney Daniel Cameron, who welcomed the measure on Tuesday and insisted he will continue to work on “the constitutionality of these guarantees for women and unborn children.” The measure comes after a judge last June blocked laws regulating this practice in the region that presume to ban it in its entirety unless the mother’s life is in serious danger. “I appreciate the court’s decision, bringing Kentucky’s pro-life laws into effect,” Cameron said on Twitter.
Source: La Verdad
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