Voters in ten states, while electing the next head of the White House, will also are voting Tuesday on amendments that seek to repeal laws banning or restricting voluntary termination of pregnancy.
They are Colorado, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada and New York, Arizona, Florida, Missouri and South Dakota, where. abortion rights advocates collected enough signatures to force a vote on its enshrinement in their state constitutions, which would overturn those bans and restrictions.
However, this referendum has failed in Floridawhich would have enshrined abortion rights in its state constitution, according to The Associated Press. This is a major defeat for advocates of the measure, who had hoped to restore broad access to the procedure in the nation’s third-largest state.
Support for the measure, known as Amendment 4, fell short of the 60% needed for passage. It would have allowed abortions “before viability,” usually around 24 weeks of pregnancy. Florida prohibits most abortions after six weeksbefore many women know they are pregnant.
The defeat, while not unexpected, halted what had been an unbroken streak of victories by abortion rights groups on the ballot since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Voters sided with abortion rights in all seven states that had ballot questions on the issue before this year, in states as different as Kansas and California. But the highest vote any of those earlier measures had won in red states was 59%, just below what Florida needed to pass.
The failure of the Florida measure is. a political victory for Governor Ron DeSantis.Ron DeSantis, a Republican, who had become the face of a well-funded and organized opposition campaign. He spent much of his political capital, and considerable state resources, to defeat it. Another ballot measure that DeSantis and his allies strongly opposed, which would have legalized marijuana in the state, was also defeated.
Currently, abortion is prohibited without exception in the states of Missouri and South Dakota.. In Arizona, abortion is prohibited before 15 weeks, in Nebraska before 12 weeks and in Florida before 6 weeks.