The people of Kansas, by soundly rejecting a Republican proposal to ban abortion, have paved the way for the Democrats to retain power.
In a referendum on August 2nd, the good people of Kansas rejected, 58% to 42%, an amendment to the state constitution that would have allowed laws to ban abortion. Image: iStock
Kansas is a small state by American standards, with an area that is 144 times that of Delhi and a population that is less than one-sixth that of Delhi: Kansas’ population is approximately 2.9 million the same one found in a large suburb of New Delhi. . But the people of Kansas are now poised to make an impact on the world that few nations can hope to have—a positive impact, to begin with.
When they hear “Kansas,” most Indians might think of Dorothy and her dog Toto, and their thrilling trip to the Wizard of Oz, and little else. But Kansans, as they call themselves, have done one remarkable thing: they’ve turned American politics on its head. In a referendum on August 2nd, the good people of Kansas rejected, 58% to 42%, an amendment to the state constitution that would have allowed laws to ban abortion.
Kansas is a red state: no, not Maoist, but conservative. Red is the color of Republicans, while Democrats favor blue. The current legislature is dominated by Republicans: they hold supermajorities in both houses of their bicameral legislature. The governor of the state, right now, is a Democrat, though.
Why the referendum?
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Thus, when the United States Supreme Court overturned the legal status of abortion as a constitutional right for all American women, instituted in the famous Roe Vs Wade ruling of 1973, and considered that it was an issue that individual states had to legislate, Republican state lawmakers wanted to amend the state constitution, which protects a woman’s right to an abortion up to 22 weeks, with some qualifications. They chose to hold a referendum for this purpose.
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They decided to hold the referendum together with the state’s primary elections, in which Democrats and Republicans choose their candidates for the federal legislatures. Turnout is usually low in primaries, especially among Democratic voters. It was hoped that this would facilitate the passage of the amendment.
Many abortion rights activists made sure that voter turnout was high. They tapped into a vein of individual freedom that the “abortion abolitionist” side was only too happy to trample on in the case of women.
What the Kansas referendum shows is that abortion rights are potentially an important political plank that Democrats can use against Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections and the 2024 presidential election.
At a time when everyone assumed that abortion was a constitutional right in the United States, it was okay for women in Republican-dominated states to go along with the common sense that abortion is against God and religion, against family values, against motherhood and apple pie. But after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority threw out Roe vs. Wade, women anywhere in red states face the prospect of losing whatever bodily autonomy they have. Their right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term, even when they are unable to assume the responsibilities of motherhood, or to abort that pregnancy, could be taken away by Republican-dominated state legislatures. This contradicts the fundamental right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that the American dream offers to all its citizens (neither women nor blacks were included among those blessed with these guarantees when the Declaration of Independence, which contains this promising promise, it was made).
In elections, the past matters
This should have been obvious to Democrats, but surprisingly it wasn’t. So demoralized have they been, with the president’s low popularity, high prices and consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, that they saw their best hope in new charges against Republicans for the January 6, 2020, uprising.
In elections, the past matters when it is linked to the future through a powerful narrative. People don’t live in the past or for the past. They want a better life for themselves and theirs, and the election is about what will happen in the coming days.
For American women, what will happen is clear: if Republican politics prevails, they will lose several degrees of freedom in their personal and career lives. The emancipation of women sounds like an orphan that has entered the present from its abandoned habitat at the end of the 19th century. But that’s what’s at stake for Americans, after the overturning of Roe vs. Wade.
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It shouldn’t be that hard for Democrats to make abortion an election issue that transcends partisan politics, to an outside observer. But divided as they are between so-called progressives and centrist pragmatists, their political vision tied to budget arithmetic and without a leader who can project a unifying and uplifting vision for all Americans, Democrats have refused so far let’s see what has been. looking them in the face.
The people of Kansas have changed that. Their high participation and rejection of aggressive campaigns by the church and other conservative elements have freed several Democrats from a visual impairment that the eye doctor calls farsightedness: the inability to see something next to them. Farsightedness is an eye defect, distinct from the virtue of farsightedness.
Will Trump return?
Right now, Republicans are on the verge of winning majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Former President Trump is thinking to become former President Trump in 2024. Many American voters are ready to welcome his return to the White House.
Even without Trump at the helm, today’s Republicans are a bunch of reality-denying, conspiracy-mongering, climate-threatening isolationists who confuse the successful deception of the politically naive American public with license to despise the world. It can be recalled that Trump had called African countries shit, cut funding to the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic, abandoned America’s Kurdish allies in the war against the Islamic State, leaving- them at the tender mercy of Turkey’s will. -being heir to the Ottomans and continuing a North Korea policy that prompted both Japan and South Korea to reassess the soundness of American security guarantees. A Republican presidency in the US in 2024 would be bad for the world.
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It would erode the world order sustained by American hyperpower before several alternative centers of power are ready to maintain order in the world that would follow. India and Europe, for example, need more time to emerge as credible centers of geopolitical power. The implosion of American power, a foretaste of which was given by President Trump, when China is rising as a world power would be bad news for the world.
The good news is that the people of Kansas have reduced the likelihood of that eventuality by a considerable margin.
(TK Arun is a senior journalist based in Delhi)
(The Federal seeks to present viewpoints and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal)