Kansas (and the Midwest) FTW
I went to junior high and high school in Omaha, and then college at the University of Northern Iowa. I’ve lived a lot of places but I lived in the Midwest the longest. Omaha was a great place for a teenager in the 1990s—we roamed the city, went to all ages punk shows, tried on a bohemian life in what was the only urban space for hundreds and hundreds of miles.
Nebraska has long voted Republican but there was a different feeling to politics there. Unlike the South, in Omaha there was a sense of pragmatism, a collective pulling together as we found ourselves in an island city, one that felt especially isolated once winter set in and the elements could be deadly. Our relatives in the South would shudder at our stories of school canceled, not for snow, but for wind chills 60 below.
A couple of weeks ago, as I read the news of Kansas voters rejecting the constitutional amendment that would have allowed for more abortion bans in the state, I was reminded of this feeling. Even though the state is reliably Republican, voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of protecting abortion rights. The results from Kansas ensure that abortion access will be a major issue in the campaigning and debates ahead of midterm elections in November.
In South Carolina, the State House and the State Senate are both having committee meetings this week on the abortion bans. The House Judicial affairs committee meeting is happening as I write this on Tuesday morning, and the State Senate Medical Affairs committee meets tomorrow. Although the majority of South Carolinians support protecting abortion rights, I’m worried the bills will advance out of committee and we’ll be one step closer to draconian bans that not only threaten our bodily autonomy but our rights to free speech and travel as well.
Planned Parenthood and the South Carolina League of Woman Voters are organizing a protest for Wednesday August 17th: https://www.weareplannedparenthoodaction.org/a/fight-back-against-abortion-bans. The SC LWV also has useful information here for the committee meetings and process: https://my.lwv.org/south-carolina-state/action-alert/stop-bans-act-now-and-be-counted
I can’t go to the protest but I have called my state representatives and emailed them. Even though I know I’m speaking from a majority position, I worry they won’t heed the will of their voters, because the South Carolina state government has never truly been a representative democracy. Protecting women’s rights is going to require real structural change so that our representatives have to actually care about women. Even if the committees advance these bills, and even if the Legislature passes them, Kansas gives me hope. Maybe it’ll be a long fight but at least there are more of us than them. And we have representatives fighting for us, like Senators Hutto, Matthews, Kimpson and Stephens, who have sponsored this bill, also before the Senate, protecting reproductive healthcare access: https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess124_2021-2022/bills/1348.htm.
Meanwhile, in Nebraska, the state won’t pursue further abortion bans: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2022/08/08/nebraska-lawmakers-arent-willing-to-pass-an-abortion-ban-governor-says/?sh=50b9602321bc.