On a Stormy Sea of Moving Emotion: The Legal Geography of the 2022 Kansas Abortion Vote

Keywords: legal geography, Kansas, abortion vote, electoral geography, precinct analysis, spatial autorcorrelation
Abstract Type: Poster Abstract

Abstract

In June 2022, The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson overturned the Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, relegating state authority in formulating abortion policy. As a result, states divided in half on this polarizing issue, with 25 states exacting greater restrictions regarding abortion, and 25 making them less restrictive (or keeping less restrictive measures in place). Kansas, as one of two “surprises” among the states, has had an interesting (if not tumultuous) legal geography that culminated for a time with its “Value them both” referendum, a legislatively referred constitutional amendment that proposed changes in language to the state constitution to remove abortion rights in Kansas When this referendum was presented to the voters in August 2022, it was overwhelmingly rejected (59% to 41%). In this study, the legal geography of events leading to this referendum are traced, followed by electoral and demographic analysis at the precinct level of nine Kansas counties in the Kansas City, MO/KS metropolitan statistical area. This analysis intends to provide evidence about the supporters and opponents of this constitutional change – the “where” and the “who” - at a microscale level. It is reasonable to assume that Democratic voters were generally against this referendum, but findings suggest that more Republican voters broke from party expectation to solidify the referendum’s landslide defeat.