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What Next: Kansas's Sketchy Abortion Vote

Slate News

Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.66K Ratings

🗓️ 2 August 2022

⏱️ 23 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

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. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

One way Stephen McAllister knows there's a big vote coming up in Kansas about abortion

0:12.4

is because of his mailbox.

0:14.6

Every day it is stuffed with glossy flyers urging him to go to the polls.

0:22.5

And it's unlike anything I've ever seen in my time as a cancer, which is the vast majority

0:28.0

of my life.

0:29.0

You send a little exhausted by this junk mail.

0:32.2

It is, it is tiring.

0:34.7

It comes every day.

0:37.9

And there's also been even handwritten notes, some groups have gotten volunteers to write

0:42.6

on postcards.

0:43.6

Hold it, you've gotten postcards from people?

0:46.4

Yes, yes.

0:51.7

Most of the mail Stephen's getting is for the amendment for the record.

0:55.7

Now Kansas recognizes abortion as a state constitutional right.

1:00.9

If this new amendment passes, that right would disappear.

1:04.6

It would put the future of abortion access into the hands of a Republican state house super

1:09.4

majority.

1:11.6

The vote?

1:12.6

It's today.

1:13.6

And it would mean the legislature is free essentially to regulate abortion in any fashion

1:22.8

they would choose.

1:30.0

Stephen is uncomfortable with all this.

...

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