It’s a fairly obvious conclusion that electing a whole bunch of Democrats all across the country is going to do a whole lot to improve the landscape when it comes to abortion rights. Well, it’s going to do a whole lot to improve everything, including my mood, but also abortion rights. And that’s pretty important!
Before we get into the ballot initiatives in individual states, let us recognize the election that will affect people all over the country — that of Texas’s newly minted Democratic Attorney General Nathan Johnson. It’s not usually the case that one state’s attorney general situation impacts too many people outside of the state, but given that World’s Biggest Loser Ken Paxton dedicated much of his time and effort to trying to sue doctors in other states that prescribed abortion pills for Texans — putting the whole practice of prescribing the pills through telemedicine in jeopardy — that’s a big deal both for Texans who want to be able to control their reproductive futures and for the doctors who can breathe a small sigh of relief. While this doesn’t mean that other AGs in other states won’t come after them, Paxton has certainly been a leader in the fight to force women to give birth against their will and the effort may die down a bit without him.
I do wonder to what extent the state’s rollback of abortion rights, the many health scares, and the two deaths that followed contributed to the shocking Republican Texas wipeout. I would think that it may at least have been part of the reason Johnson was elected over his Republican competitor, Mayes Middleton, who had promised to continue Paxton’s aggressive enforcement of anti-abortion laws in the state.
The state’s maternal mortality rate increased by 56 percent the year after Roe v. Wade was overturned, and a lot of people may have been put off by that! As much as anti-choicers romanticize the idea of women dying in childbirth to save their children, it’s not really the kind of thing that tends to be aspirational on a personal level.
In Missouri, voters dashed the dreams of the anti-choice weirdos who had spent the last two years dreaming of upending voters’ previous decision to approve an amendment to the state constitution protecting the right to an abortion. Missouri was the very first state to officially ban abortion after the Dobbs decision. And then they became one of the states that suffered a major spike in maternal mortality. And then lawmakers tried to go even further and introduce a law that would allow them to punish abortion with the death penalty. That one did not go over well!
So, in 2024, voters overwhelmingly approved the initiative to legalize abortion again. Rather than try to convince them to change their minds, Republican lawmakers insisted that they were all very stupid people who didn’t even know what they were voting for!
LIKE SO!
Maybe they thought they were voting for free candy? Or a new trampoline park? I mean, there are just a million ways to interpret confusing phrases like “remove Missouri’s ban on abortion” and “establish a right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion and contraceptives, with any governmental interference of that right presumed invalid.”
This year, the anti-choicers in the Lege got their own referendum on the ballot, assuming that their very stupid voters would just vote “yes” on anything put in front of them … but it did not work out that way. Probably because they were rudely forced to change their wording on the initiative to make it clear that it would result in another abortion ban.
THIS ONE RIGHT HERE!
Missourians voted the initiative down 55 to 44, which was an even larger percentage than voted in favor of the one that established the right to abortion in the first place (51-48) — so apparently there were a few converts.
Oh! And not only did they vote to keep abortion legal, they also voted to make it more difficult for lawmakers to overturn citizen-led initiatives. Welp!
It’s also worth noting that even tacking on a ban on gender affirming surgeries for minors (which already exists in the state) did not help. It’s almost as though voters are starting to see through that nonsense!
In both Nevada and Virginia, where abortion was already legal, voters chose to enshrine the right in their constitutions. Yay, Nevada and Virginia!
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The one big dark spot is Idaho, which despite the many, many issues caused by it, decided to continue its draconian complete and total ban on abortion.
MORE ON THAT.
It’s really a very fucked situation there. They’re down to about 170 ob-gyns for the whole state, people are relying on family doctors and midwives to deliver babies, they’re sending pregnant women facing severe emergencies to nearby states to have procedures that are illegal to perform in Idaho (which will probably bankrupt them for life, as insurance covers that only in extremely rare situations), it’s impossible to get an emergency hysterectomy, and everyone involved is getting burnt the fuck out.
Truly, it is a horrible and cruel situation and one wonders how many doctors they’re going to have to lose before they give this shit up.
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞’𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝟓𝟔 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐑𝐨𝐞 𝐯. 𝐖𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐝, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐥𝐨𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐩𝐮𝐭 𝐨𝐟𝐟 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭!
Party of pro-life, people.
sorry sorry off topic,
but yet another stick in the eye for the current occupant of the White House, as Revolution Wind goes online at capacity, making the electric out of wind for hundreds of thousands of humans:
https://whatsupnewp.com/2026/11/revolution-wind-reaches-full-power-off-rhode-islands-coast/