Kansas abortion vote rocks US midterms outlook
The surprise vote in Republican-heavy Kansas to repudiate a push for abortion bans fired shockwaves through the US political landscape ahead of November's midterm elections, with President Joe Biden's Democrats now seeing a glimmer of hope that they may avoid their predicted drubbing.
Ever since the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to terminate a pregnancy in June, US conservatives have been nervously asking whether their triumphant push to severely restrict access to the procedure -- a decades-long dream -- has gone too far in the run-up to the midterms.
In Kansas, they got an answer.
The state is a Republican stronghold, but in Tuesday's referendum, a bid to remove abortion rights from the Kansas constitution was rejected by 59 to 41 percent, with unusually heavy turnout.
Given this was the first time Americans had an opportunity to vote on the issue since the conservative-dominated Supreme Court ruled to overturn the half-century-old Roe v. Wade decision enshrining abortion rights, Democrats are rejoicing -- and say the backlash is only beginning.
"They don't have a clue about the power of American women. Last night in Kansas, they found out," Joe Biden says after the Midwestern US state voted to maintain the right to abortion.
"The voters of Kansas sent a powerful signal that this fall the American people will vote to preserve and protect their rights and refuse to let them be ripped away by politicians," the US President added at the White House.
