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Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. We just took a look at Kansas and their vote last week to preserve access to abortion in the state, which is a start of a record number of state-level votes taking place on abortion this election season. A proposed constitutional amendment in Kentucky much like the one that failed in Kansas would amend the state constitution to explicitly ban the right to abortion.

Proposals in Vermont, California, and likely in Michigan would have the opposite effect, enshrining abortion rights in their state constitutions. A ballot measure in Montana would establish personhood and require medical care for infants born alive after attempted abortions. Here to help us break it all down is Nicole Narea. She's a politics reporter for Vox. Nicole, thanks for being here today.

Nicole Narea: Thanks for having me, Melissa.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. Let's walk through these remaining states where abortion access is actually on the ballot. Why is it on the ballot in these states and not in others?

Nicole Narea: I think some of these states had anticipated that we would be facing the end of Roe right now, and particularly in blue states, there were efforts to shore up abortion rights well before Dobbs came down in June and even before the opinion was leaked in early May.

I guess in the case of Vermont and California, both of those states already protected abortion rights under state law, but they wanted to go even further by codifying those rights in their state constitutions and tying them directly to state constitutional rights to privacy and equal protection under the laws, making it so that a state legislature would have a hard time repealing those rights.

In Michigan, we're seeing this proposed ballot measure. It hasn't been officially put on the ballot in November yet but it's expected to. It's really directed at codifying abortion rights because Michigan has a pre-Roe abortion ban on the books that was first enacted in 1931, and has no exceptions for rape or incest. In that case, it's really directed at preventing that law from going into effect by ensuring that their state constitution affirmatively protects abortion rights. In Kentucky and Montana, obviously, much more red states that are trying to pass anti-abortion ballot measures.

I think Kentucky, much like Kansas, has been hoping to further restrict abortion. It's already significantly restricted there since the Supreme Court decision came down. Kentucky's trigger law that bans all procedures with limited exceptions has taken effect. Another thing worth mentioning for the ballot measure there is that it wants to clarify that not only is there no right to an abortion as defined in the state constitution, but also no requirement for state funding of abortion. At the same time, Kentucky already bans Medicaid coverage under a state plan of the procedure in most circumstances. At this point, it's already significantly restricted there, and I'm not sure it's going to make much of a difference.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Is there a possibility that Vermont and California could have a surprise in the way that so many were surprised about Kansas? States where it seems obvious the likelihood that the state would actually enshrine and codify in the constitution these abortion rights could actually discover that having opened this up to a ballot measure, that that measure fails and it makes abortion less protected in the state.

Nicole Narea: Yes. I think we're looking at very different political contexts here. Vermont already allows abortions at any stage of pregnancy and abortion is legal up to the point of viability in California. I think in political science, you often see that there's a status quo bias and people don't want to see their rights being taken away.

Melissa Harris-Perry: In Kansas, we saw a very high voter turnout, historically high for a primary. Is it possible in these other states that having these ballot measures available for voters will increase turnout overall across these states?

Nicole Narea: Yes, I think it's definitely feasible. At this point, though, California, Kentucky, and Montana all held their primaries before Dobbs came down, so it's harder to say whether voters there are being motivated to turn out by the end of Roe. I did take the look at some of the voter registration numbers in Kentucky. Kentucky added roughly 4,000 new voters between late April and June, and a majority of them were women. We're still trying to get a handle on the turnout in Vermont since the primaries were literally last night. I think maybe Michigan's primary could be a good indicator here. It was last week, post-Dobbs, and both sides of the debate are taking turnout numbers as a good sign for them. Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor, ran unopposed but still got 82% of the number of votes that she got in 2018 when she had a serious challenger, which would suggest that enthusiasm is up on the Democratic side. As I mentioned earlier, the abortion issue is really salient in Michigan because Republicans in the state legislature are trying to implement this 1931 ban, while Whitmer is opposing it and asking the state Supreme Court to strike it down. That court battle is still ongoing, but I think it's going to continue to be a salient issue in the general election in the governor's race.

At the same time, anti-abortion advocates are also taking it as a good sign because more voters cast ballots as Republicans, but then in the past three primaries where there was a governor's race on the ballot. They're looking at these numbers and saying that enthusiasm is also up on their side. I think we're also just seeing in the polls nationally that this is a motivating issue for voters. It's maybe not ranking up there as high as inflation or the economy, but when it comes to actually motivating voters to get out to the polls, even if it's not the most important issue on their mind, it is something that is getting people out.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I want to talk about Montana because the strategy here is a little bit different. This isn't a constitutional amendment. What we're seeing here is a personhood, a bill that will establish personhood, and then there's also language in this bill about infants born alive. What is this about?

Nicole Narea: Yes. This is a measure that would declare that infants born alive at any stage of development are legal persons, and would require that medical care be provided to them following attempted abortion, but also induced labor and C-sections. It would set a $50,000 fine and a maximum 20-year prison sentence for violators. It's not clear whether it's going to pass at this point since a majority of Montana voters say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

As you said, it's not directly attacking this abortion question, it's on these born alive infants. I think it's worth noting that there are already laws that would protect infants in those circumstances. It does seem a little bit like a measure to fearmonger and make people think that they have no rights in that situation.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let me build on that for a second around the question of strategy here because certainly the general election, these tend to be higher information elections than in primaries. At all points, midterms are typically lower information elections and in a presidential election year. Some of these ballot measures do seem confusing. Even the Kansas measure was a bit confusing in terms of what it meant to vote no versus vote yes. For the activists or the state legislature in all the states, whether they are on the side of protecting or eliminating abortion, how much a part of all of this is figuring out a wording or framing or a framework that they believe will move and motivate voters?

Nicole Narea: I think that was definitely a problem in terms of the Kansas messaging. Even anti-abortion advocates think that the language was too confusing to get their message through and that they're looking to other states that have simpler language. The Kentucky measure is really only a one-sentence amendment. I think it's harder maybe for both sides to construe it in any way. In Kansas, the anti-abortion advocates are saying that people on the left were able to fearmonger about the potential implications of what that amendment might mean.

Of course, I don't think it was fear-mongering at all because Republicans there were putting this on the ballot with the intention of creating space for them to legislate to restrict abortion, often with disastrous consequences for reproductive health, so bit of a misnomer. That's why I think in Kentucky, this is maybe a simpler fight at stake. In Michigan, I think their amendment is a proposed 300 words so we could see some of the same confusion around the messaging there.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Nicole Narea is a politics reporter for Vox. Nicole, thanks for being on The Takeaway today.

Nicole Narea: Thanks for having me.

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