For the first time since the Supreme Court revoked the biological freedom of millions of American women, there is some unequivocally good news on the abortion-rights front — and it comes from, of all places, ruby-red Kansas. It's impossible to overstate the importance of the overwhelming rejection by Kansas voters of a measure that would have opened their state to the kind of draconian restrictions on abortion rights now in place in Missouri and other Republican-led states.

Most important is that it happened in a state in which a wide majority of registered voters are Republican. Anyone who might previously have assumed there is no point in trying to amend Missouri's constitution to protect abortion rights should rethink that assumption in light of these results.

Kansas' Supreme Court in 2019 ruled that the state constitution's language regarding personal autonomy protects abortion rights. That decision took on crucial new relevance with the U.S. Supreme Court's late-June ruling that the U.S. Constitution contains no such protections. That reversal of Roe v. Wade left Kansas' constitution as the only thing standing between Kansas women and a Republican-controlled Legislature eager to dictate their medical decisions for them.

For the first time since the Supreme Court revoked the biological freedom of millions of American women, there is some unequivocally good news on the abortion-rights front — and it comes from, of all places, ruby-red Kansas. It's impossible to overstate the importance of the overwhelming rejection by Kansas voters of a measure that would have opened their state to the kind of draconian restrictions on abortion rights now in place in Missouri and other Republican-led states.

Most important is that it happened in a state in which a wide majority of registered voters are Republican. Anyone who might previously have assumed there is no point in trying to amend Missouri's constitution to protect abortion rights should rethink that assumption in light of these results.

Kansas' Supreme Court in 2019 ruled that the state constitution's language regarding personal autonomy protects abortion rights. That decision took on crucial new relevance with the U.S. Supreme Court's late-June ruling that the U.S. Constitution contains no such protections. That reversal of Roe v. Wade left Kansas' constitution as the only thing standing between Kansas women and a Republican-controlled Legislature eager to dictate their medical decisions for them.

National polls have long indicated that Americans, including Republicans, strongly favor keeping abortion legal, within reason. The Kansas results confirm it.

Pro-choice forces around America should embrace the message here: Americans broadly support abortion rights even in places where their elected representatives don't. With red-state legislatures generally sitting far to the right of their constituents, going around them and directly to the people is one way to mitigate the damage conservative Supreme Court justices have done.

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