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Melissa Harris-Perry: You're listening to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and it's good to have you with us.

We're two days out from the 2022 midterm elections, and voters across the country, we're not only determining which party would control the US House and Senate, but also the future of abortion rights in many states. An exit poll from Edison Research and the AP Vote Cast show that abortion was the second highest priority for voters right behind inflation.

Supporters of reproductive rights had wins among the many Democratic candidates who made legal abortion central to their campaigns. There were also victories for reproductive rights in the states where abortion was directly on the ballot this election cycle. For more on this, I'm joined by Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. Also with us is Sarah McCammon, who is National Correspondent at NPR covering abortion rights policy. Sarah, Alexis, welcome to The Takeaway.

Sarah McCammon: Thank you.

Alexis: Thank you, Melissa.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, Sarah, I'm going to start with you, what were the five ballot initiatives that were on ballots on Tuesday night?

Sarah McCammon: Three of them were essentially what abortion rights advocates tend to term proactive measures, efforts to shore up abortion rights in state constitutions. Those passed in Vermont, California, and Michigan. Now, those first two states were pretty widely expected to pass. Those are states with large populations of Democratic and progressive voters, and those passed by very large majorities.

Michigan was the one that everyone was watching really closely. Abortion was a big issue, not just in the ballot initiative campaign, but also in the gubernatorial race. Michigan voters also very strongly approved this measure to protect abortion rights in their state constitution. The other two states were Montana and Kentucky.

Now, Montana's is a little bit unique. It's what supporters of the proposal, what abortion rights opponents refer to as a born alive amendment. It would've required healthcare providers to provide life support, to as the amendment termed it, infants born at any stage of development, and that would include even at the very beginning of a pregnancy. This was something that was opposed by much of the medical community and critics have pointed out that already healthcare providers are expected, according to the standards of their profession, to provide appropriate medical support. Infanticide is already illegal in Montana, but this, I think, was seen by many people as a messaging strategy by abortion rights opponents.

Kentucky was the last one, and I spent some time in Kentucky. It was a little bit confusing, I think, to a lot of voters who tried to understand exactly how that one worked. Kentucky voters were asked to explicitly state in their state constitution that there was no right to an abortion, and they rejected that. A bit of a double negative there. There was a lot of effort on the ground in Kentucky to work against that amendment and the campaign to defeat it succeeded.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Alexis, let come to you exactly on Kentucky. Kentucky was obviously one of the first states that was called on election night with big majorities reelecting Republicans in the state and statewide elections and yet also rejecting this measure. First of all, what does that mean from your perspective about where voters across the country stand, but also, what is this going to mean for Kentucky's abortion ban?

Alexis McGill Johnson: What it means is that when abortion is on the ballot, voters vote for freedom. I think what is interesting is that they were very clear that they could both vote for the ballot measure that they believed in and also they chose different candidates for Congress. I think that is something that as people who need to connect the dots between the laws that are being made by politicians as well as the ability to have direct democracy on abortion, that we need to continue to demonstrate how oftentimes lawmakers are part of this challenge and part of this problem.

I think what it means for Kentucky is that people will be able to have access to abortion. This is a state that I think not only beat this ballot measure, but also made the organizing in Kentucky a lot better. I think we've seen that consistently across the board.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Does this ballot measure overturn the restriction? Will there still have to be a legal case? What happens in Kentucky?

Sarah McCammon: It's a little bit different than, for example, Kansas, where voters rejected a similar measure a few months ago. In Kansas, the fight there was to protect the status quo, where abortion is still legal in Kansas. It's not legal in Kentucky right now because of two state laws that were allowed to take effect after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Abortion rights supporters in Kentucky are in the midst of a legal battle challenging those two laws. They're appealing to the state constitution, arguing that it should protect the right to an abortion.

This vote was really pivotal to that case. There's a hearing scheduled in that case next week in Kentucky State Supreme Court. I spoke to the Planned Parenthood chapter in Kentucky just this week, they're feeling very positive very hopeful about the outcome of this case. They saw defeating this ballot initiative as really essential to having a chance to overturn those two abortion bans.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, Alexis, I want to go back to your point, that there were these moments of direct democracy, opportunity for voters to specifically say directly what they wanted in terms of the protection of reproductive rights. Then there were states where it was on the ballot, but not directly there. I live in North Carolina, certainly one aspect of the campaign here had been that if republicans in the state legislature could gain a veto proof majority, then despite the fact that the Democratic governor here in North Carolina has said that he would veto any measures to end abortion in North Carolina, that they would be able to overturn that veto.

Republicans here did not win that, but they did flip the court here in North Carolina. Again, now you hear activists saying that there's a real possibility that the courts could overturn. As you look at the broad perspective of what's happening in states like North Carolina, Michigan, others, Alexis, what do you see as a merging in this patchwork?

Alexis McGill Johnson: I think North Carolina, I would argue abortion made the Senate race there incredibly competitive. You had a candidate who was very full-throated and clear about not just the impact of not having a majority in the Senate for what would happen with a national abortion ban, but also understood very clearly that ensuring that the governor could vote over a super majority in the North Carolina legislator was important so that people needed to protect Governor Cooper's veto power.

I think the work continues to be state by state understanding where the levers are for anti-abortion activists and making sure we are going systematically fighting each of those from the state court to the DAs, to the AGs, to the governors. We've always said these are fights that we're going to have to have up and down the ballot.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Sarah, are there some key locations now post midterm 2022 where you expect to see the battleground around the politics and the policy emerge with particular fervor?

Sarah McCammon: When you put abortion on the ballot directly to voters, voters are showing a real willingness, at least at this stage, to push back against restrictive laws, even in red states. The sources I'm talking to at organizations like the ACLU and others that really look at at things like ballot measures are very interested in what more they can do going forward in that regard.

There's a real sense that there's a mismatch between the electorate in many of these states and what some of their elected leaders are doing in terms of state policy. I would look at states like Ohio, states like Florida, Missouri, Arkansas potentially, or all states I've heard mentioned as potential future targets for ballot initiatives, places where there are, in many cases, deep abortion restrictions, but where advocates think that doesn't line up with what the voters actually want, and if they put that question directly to voters on the ballot, like was just done this week, the result could be to protect abortion rights or to overturn restrictions.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Alexis, do you think that this will shift the strategy of Republican lawmakers at the federal level? If it doesn't look like a winning strategy to put abortion restrictions at the center, will we see differing kinds of efforts from Republican lawmakers?

Alexis McGill Johnson: Look, we saw yesterday the SBA list come out very strongly against the GOP for not investing more or standing in a more full-throated way as with restricting abortion access. What that says to me is that they are going to be stuck between a rock and a hard place between activating a constituency that has been incredibly loyal to them versus really competing for independent votes and trying to persuade other voters to come along on their journey.

I think what we saw consistently was that people said that they did not want the government in the middle of these decisions. When you have the GOP and the form of Lindsey Graham naming that a national abortion ban would be a good thing and defying all the logic of returning these decisions to the states, I think they have a lot to wrestle with and they will want to move away, and that could come at the expense of activating a base of the party that has been very animated for them.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm just wondering, Alexis, is there an agenda from Planned Parenthood Action Fund, from other reproductive rights organizations for the lame-duck session?

Alexis McGill Johnson: Yes, we are actually actively engaged in those conversations right now. We still are holding out hope on both chambers of Congress that if we are able to get to 52 through this very narrow path, we would be able to ensure some kind of signing of the Women's Health Protection Act. Of course, the Planned Parenthood and reproductive rights organizations are engaged in many conversations with the administration around what we can do to continue to protect patients, continue to protect providers against all of the extreme bans that we are seeing happen state by state.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Sarah, a final question for you. The court is meant to be a bit insulated from public opinion and yet it typically doesn't run far ahead of public opinion. I'm wondering if the justices on the court will see the results, particularly in these five states, but across the 2022 midterms as an indication that they did in fact move beyond where public opinion is on this issue.

Sarah McCammon: They clearly moved beyond public opinion. A majority of Americans supported Roe v. Wade, did not want it overturned, even if they did support some restrictions on abortion in some situations. I spoke to a law professor at NYU yesterday, Melissa Murray, who studies a lot of these things, and the first thing she said was these election results are a real repudiation of the Supreme Court decision.

Now, will it affect the way the justices think about these issues, the way they rule? That's anyone's guess, but I think what we're seeing is the overturning of Roe v. Wade has left this issue now to the states, and as we've been saying for a long time, the fight is really at the state level and it's at every level. It's even in the ballot box directly before voters in some cases. I think in many of these states they spoke pretty clearly about what they think about the current status of abortion restrictions that have been sweeping much of the country.

Melisaa Harris-Perry: Sarah McCammon is a national correspondent at NPR covering abortion rights policy, and Alexis McGill Johnson is president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. Alexis, Sarah, thank you.

Sarah McCammon: Thank you.

Alexis McGill Johnson: Thank you.

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