Kansans may have resoundingly rejected an antiabortion referendum last year, by a striking double-digit margin, to ensure reproductive rights remain enshrined in the state constitution, but that wasn’t deterrence enough for the state’s Republican legislators. Nor was, apparently, the Republican Party’s relatively poor performance this past midterm cycle—one largely defined by the fall of Roe v. Wade. “I’m hearing a lot from my constituents who believe we should continue to do more to help the unborn,” Wichita state senator Chase Blasi told reporters earlier this month, proposing a law that would allow cities and counties to regulate abortions, in spite of state protections.
These first few weeks of 2023 suggest it’s not that Republican lawmakers missed the abortion memo—they simply don’t seem to care. In Washington, a newly empowered Republican House passed an antiabortion bill during its first full week in the majority. And across the country, Republican state lawmakers continue the crusade against reproductive rights, attempting to find ways to circumvent popular opinion, and even statutory protections.
“We knew all along that they weren’t going to be satisfied with overturning Roe v. Wade,” Abby Ledoux, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Action Fund, says of antiabortion lawmakers and activists in an interview with Vanity Fair. Reflecting on the slew of legislation that has been introduced in state houses across the country so far this year, Ledoux adds, “They’re not done and they’re coming for more rights.”
Since the start of the year, across 27 states, more than 105 bills that would restrict abortion have been filed or prefiled—(meaning, not all of them have been formally introduced), according to Planned Parenthood Action Fund. Many of these bills would ban abortion—some at fertilization; six bills—filed in Kansas, Missouri, New Hampshire, Texas, Wyoming, and West Virginia—would specifically target medication abortions, according to the fund; others would impose harsh criminal penalties for doctors and abortion-seekers. Of course, not all of these bills are expected to pass, but they do lay bare the ever changing legal and political landscape in post-Roe America.
It isn’t just the overt attempts at restricting abortion access that concern reproductive rights activists. But also what Ledoux refers to as “underhanded attempts” and “work-arounds” that have the potential to “subvert democracy, to thwart the will of the people, and to really rig the game” in pursuit of unpopular political agendas. For instance, in Ohio, Republican lawmakers introduced a bill that would require a supermajority threshold of 60%, as opposed to a simple majority of voters, to pass ballot measures to amend the state constitution. Similar legislation was also introduced in Arizona.
“We continue to see a wide gulf between how voters are expressing their desires and how many extremist legislatures are acting,” Kelly Hall, the executive director of the Fairness Project, an advocacy group that backs progressive ballot measures, says.
“Ballot measures are never anyone’s first path. They are always a response to a dysfunctional legislative system,” Hall says. But, she adds, “Ballot measures remain a really key strategy for circumventing legislatures that are not listening to us. And because of that, those same legislatures are also trying to tighten their grip on their own power and make it harder for voters to participate in direct democracy and use ballot measures.” During the midterms, reproductive rights activists claimed victory on five of the five abortion-related referendums on the ballot.
But it is not just ballot measures that Republicans are targeting. House Republicans in North Carolina seek to change the rules to make it easier to override a governor’s veto. In West Virginia, lawmakers got rid of the process altogether; bills can speed through the process without going through committee, hearings, or debates. The Utah state legislature is currently voting on a bill that would change the threshold for parties to obtain a judicial injunction—like the one that blocked the initial abortion ban in the state. Lawmakers in Kansas, similarly, want to make it easier to impeach judges.
These attempts don’t only have really grave implications for abortion rights, but, as Ledoux points out, “a whole range of other rights that we know are also threatened and under attack in many of these states.”
Republican lawmakers continue to signal that they aren’t walking away with having just unraveled federal protections. “As many of us suspected, this issue will keep coming back and keep coming back,” state Senator Cindy Holscher, a Kansas Democrat, said after her Republican colleague proposed moving abortion regulations to the local level. “General citizens feel like, Okay, that issue’s been settled.” But even though the dust has barely settled from the 2022 midterms, Democrats are already bracing for another election cycle about abortion rights.
Abigail Tracy
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