What Next - Kansas's Sketchy Abortion Vote
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 August 2022
⏱️ 23 minutes
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Summary
Following a 2017 state supreme court decision, the right to an abortion is recognized by Kansas’s state constitution. But with some suspect scheduling and seemingly deliberately confusing language, citizens of Kansas are voting today on whether to return control over reproductive healthcare to the state’s deeply Republican legislature.
Guest: Stephen R. McAllister, former U.S. district attorney and University of Kansas law professor.
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Transcript
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| 0:36.9 | One way Steven McHallister knows there's a big vote coming up in Kansas. About abortion |
| 0:42.0 | is because of his mailbox. Every day it is stuffed with glossy flyers, urging him to |
| 0:47.9 | go to the polls. |
| 0:48.9 | And it's unlike anything I've ever seen in my time as a cancer, which is the vast majority |
| 0:57.5 | of my life. |
| 0:58.5 | You send a little exhausted by this junk mail. |
| 1:01.8 | It is tiring. It comes every day. And there's also been even handwritten notes. Some |
| 1:10.3 | groups have gotten volunteers to write on postcards. |
| 1:13.5 | Hold it, you've gotten postcards from people? |
| 1:16.0 | Yes. |
| 1:17.0 | Most of the mail Steven's getting is for the amendment for the record. Right now Kansas |
| 1:25.9 | recognizes abortion as a state constitutional right. If this new amendment passes, that |
| 1:32.5 | right would disappear. It would put the future of abortion access into the hands of a Republican |
| 1:37.8 | statehouse supermajority. Right. The vote? It's today. And it would mean the legislature |
| 1:47.9 | is free essentially to regulate abortion in any fashion it would choose. |
| 1:59.7 | Steven is uncomfortable with all this. He considers himself pro-choice. There's one more |
... |
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