Abortion rights are poised to come before Michigan voters in November after an abortion rights campaign turned in a record-breaking number of signatures Monday for a ballot initiative to the secretary of state’s office.
The effort will further increase attention on Michigan's elections, where the battleground state’s Democratic governor and attorney general have made abortion rights a centerpiece of their reelection campaigns.
The effort in Michigan comes amid a push in Kansas by abortion opponents to amend that state’s constitution to declare that it does not grant a right to abortion and that lawmakers can regulate it as they see fit — opening the door to a ban. The Kansas Supreme Court declared in 2019 that under the state’s Bill of Rights, access to abortion is a “fundamental” right.
Kansas is the first state to consider such a change in its constitution since the decision, but Kentucky voters will decide on a similar initiative in November. Voters in four other states added similar provisions to their state constitutions: Tennessee in 2014; Alabama and West Virginia in 2018; and Louisiana in 2020. Lawmakers in Iowa and Pennsylvania are pushing for similar measures.
The push to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution comes weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and gave states the power to decide whether to ban the procedure. The ruling is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states.