Abortion Wins Elections. What Happens Next?

As it turns out, ballot initiatives aren't a magic cure—they're the start of a long process.

From this time last year, on the road in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

Abortion is on the ballot.

On some level, this is always true, given how politicized abortion has become. But this year, in ten states, it is literally true: Voters in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, and South Dakota will weigh in directly on abortion-related ballot initiatives.

In half these states, abortion is legal (though restrictions often remain). In the other half, abortion is banned or severely restricted. Theoretically, voters in those states have an opportunity to restore access. The odds are good: Every time an abortion-related question has appeared on a ballot since the overturn of Roe, the public has voted in favor of abortion rights.

But the truth is, none of those triumphant victories led to the immediate removal of legal restraints. As it turns out, codifying a new state constitutional right doesn’t automatically repeal all the unconstitutional laws on the books.

For my latest story, I took a look at three states where voters have already shown up in support of abortion rights—Kansas, Michigan, and Ohio—and the work that’s still ongoing to align state law with voter preference one or two years later. You can read it here.

Sandpoint Lady Liberty, North Idaho.

Idaho revisited

We’re also coming up on the one-year anniversary of my reporting trip to Idaho, funded by the International Women’s Media Foundation. The three-part series that came out of that trip is some of the work I’m most proud of, so I hope you’ll check it out if you haven’t yet.

If you’ve already read the stories but would like to revisit them, I think you’ll find they’re topical. For example, I reported on the intentional political migration of Christian nationalists to Idaho, and how they systematically took over local offices.

We’ve since updated that story to reflect the massive success of the locals I spoke with who were organizing to take their government back: In this year’s primary elections, they ousted 15 far-right incumbent state lawmakers, and in North Idaho, the more centrist North Idaho Republicans took 30 out of 73 precinct committee seats back from the far-right Kootenai County Republican Central Committee.

I also reported on a then-nascent ballot measure that would open up Idaho’s primary elections, creating a single, non-partisan primary with ranked choice voting. If that sounds outlandish to you, it’s not—the initiative is widely expected to succeed, and far-right lawmakers are panicking accordingly. It’s on the general election ballot, so we’ll soon know what Idahoans choose.

And finally, the first story from my Idaho series, which examined how the state’s abortion ban created a culture of fear among pregnant people, remains one of our most-read stories on Rewire’s website this year.

I remain eternally grateful to everyone I met in Idaho for their generosity and vulnerability. I also got to work with two fantastic photographers on the trip, and the stories are worth a look if only to see those images.

Me in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, interviewing Tony Stewart, one of the founders of Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, a group that successfully organized to force the Aryan Nations out of North Idaho. Photo by Margaret Albaugh.