Landslide!
The word appears in enthusiastic accounts of how Kansas voters voted “No” against a state constitutional amendment that would have banned abortion altogether. As Democracy Now puts it, “Nearly 60% of Kansas voters opposed the ballot measure. The lopsided vote surprised many, since Donald Trump won Kansas by 15% in 2020.”
In a world where we still measure everything against the shadow of Trump, I can see why a 60-40 vote is considered a “landslide,” (an admittedly contested term) but — and here I cough discreetly — while that is an impressive number, it’s not — and here I crouch behind a large metal table set on its side — a massive victory. A massive victory would have been 80%. Hell, I would have settled for 70%. 60% can only be considered a landslide in a country where the 2020 presidential election gave us the highest voter turnout of this century, 66.8%. For more context: the 2018 midterm elections marked the highest voter turnout in such, since 1914: 49.4%. So, sure, I see why 60% is considered a landslide but we need to admit that it’s not.
Putting aside the matter of numbers: Let me emphasise that it’s not that the result is not significant. It is, in a majority Republican state. But we have to remember that this vote does not represent any advancement in abortion rights: it simply means that Kansas preserves the status quo on abortion in a state where the procedure has long been tightly regulated and continues to be so. Abortions in Kansas are only legal up to twenty weeks after fertilisation; the state has banned the dilation and evacuation procedure; it requires parental consent for minors; even “the use of telemedicine to administer medication abortion is prohibited,” according to the Guttmacher Institute — and those are just a few of the onerous restrictions placed on people seeking abortion.
Yes, it’s a victory that Kansas did not slide even further down into its abortion hellmouth but let’s keep the broader context of, you know, reality, in sight.
Centrists can celebrate all they want, but what do we on the left do with this moment? We should see it as a stark reminder that most people in the United States see our demand that abortion be free, on demand, and without apology as an extreme and unreasonable one. To celebrate Kansas as if it’s the sign of a new day a-dawning, some sign of hope for abortion in a post-Roe world is to continue on the path that has made abortion virtually impossible for millions of women and pushed them into poverty and despair.
Opponents of the ballot measure went about garnering support by playing to the most centrist voters who effectively say no to abortion except under the most excruiating circumstances. On Twitter, Bill Scher lists some of the ads used in the campaign by the Vote No activtists and notes, approvingly, that each one played to the center-Right (even if he doesn’t identify it as such) of the abortion issue. Most don’t even use the word “abortion,” one uses the culturally sympathetic figure of a Catholic grandmother who says she “won’t support putting a woman’s life at risk,” and another has a male doctor speaking against banning abortion outright because, well, really, a woman doctor might just be speaking from the centre of her period and who can trust that? In an article for the Washington Monthly, Scher notes approvingly that “not all Republicans want to ban abortion.” Well, that has always been true but this is by no means a good thing: the family of George H.W Bush was historically in favour of abortion rights until it wasn’t, for political reasons (Prescott Bush, father to George H. W, was an early supporter of Planned Parenthood).
Besides, the trouble with abortion is not that it’s banned: the trouble is that it has, for many decades since Roe, met with a stream of impediments for all but the very rich: banning has been practically unnecessary. For decades since Roe, millions of women have faced mounting and insurmountable obstacles because of waiting periods, costs (which including losing jobs because of waiting periods, which causes further impoverishment), parental consent, the humiliation and emotional abuse of mandated pro-life messaging and being shown ultrasounds to dissuade them, and so much more.
Right now, jubilant pro-choicers are wondering what lessons “we” might take from Kansas. The left needs to take only one: organise like our lives depend on it, because they do. The amendment was not defeated because of some groundswell of goodwill on the part of voters in Kansas but because many, many people gave up time and more to talk to other voters about the inherent problems with the amendment, to canvas, to blanket the airwaves and neighbourhoods with the kind of messaging that worked in Kansas. That message was, in essence, “Abortion is a terrible tragedy that we must prevent at all costs, and we must exert so many controls on access that it becomes virtually impossible to obtain one but maybe today, we shouldn’t go quite this far.” What we, on the left, absolutely cannot and must not do is use that messaging. For us, the message needs to be, “Everyone has a right to abortion that’s free, on demand, and without apology.”
For decades, the pro-choice movement has been dominated by mostly white, affluent women and groups like Planned Parenthood (led by the same white women, we could argue, even when its leaders are not technically white). For decades, pro-choicers have wept and wrung tears out of their sad stories about abortion, hoping that tales of blood and near-ruination might somehow bring about a change in attitude. Instead, for decades, as I write in “On Abortion Stories,” anti-abortionists have hardened in their attitudes and abortion access has been steadily eroding for all but those fortunate to have private healthcare. Roe didn’t end abortion access: it heralded the end of it.
Now, post-Roe, we on the left have the opportunity to seize the moment and start afresh and demand the only thing that will make life bearable for millions: a right to abortion free, on demand, without apology. I fear that Kansas will mean a weakening of our resolve as centrist feminists tell us to Hush, hush now and play nice because looks what happens when we let the nice people give us crumbs!
Kansas can and should take the left back to its history of long, hard organising, and we should move forward with a full commitment to a truly left agenda on abortion. Everything else, like placating and comforting centrists who only kick us in the teeth, should be subject to a radical unlearning. Instead of celebrating what happened in Kansas, we should ask: How might we make abortion in this state more, not less, possible?
The point is not to learn from Kansas, but to change Kansas.
Enough with compromises. We can and should demand much more: free abortion, on demand, with no apologies. Nothing else will do.
For more on the failure of the Left and its lack of commitment to its own ideology, see “A Manifesto.”
For more on feminism and abortion, see:
“Bourgeois Feminist Feminism.”
“Abortive Reasoning,” with Eugenia Williamson
“March As Feminists, Not As Women.”
“Bitches of Capitalism: My Speech on International Working Women’s Day, March 8.”
For more on my views on anything, see this whole website (browsing the Categories is a good way to start).
Don’t plagiarise any of this, in any way. I have used legal resources to punish and prevent plagiarism, and I am ruthless and persistent. I make a point of citing people and publications all the time: it’s not that hard to mention me in your work, and to refuse to do so and simply assimilate my work is plagiarism. You don’t have to agree with me to cite me properly; be an ethical grownup, and don’t make excuses for your plagiarism. Read and memorise “On Plagiarism.” There’s more forthcoming, as I point out in “The Plagiarism Papers.” If you’d like to support me, please donate and/or subscribe, or get me something from my wish list. Thank you.
Image: “Tread,” Yasmin Nair, 2022