Four years after ‘Value Them Both,’ Kansas abortion rights are back on the ballot Aug. 4

It’s all about abortion.

It’s always been all about abortion.

The constitutional amendment calling for popular elections of Kansas Supreme Court justices has one central motivation: Allowing Republican officials to limit or ban abortion. And I will go out on a limb and predict that if the measure passes, elected justices will eventually sustain such limits or bans.

Yes, Kansans voted on abortion rights back in 2022. Yes, the subject has come up again, this time clothed in ever-more confusing language.

Both anti-abortion residents and abortion-right supporters should take a few minutes to understand how we got here, a mere four years after “Value Them Both” went down in flames. We all deserve straightforward truth about the amendment, not political spin. While I might not be the biggest fan of Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach, at least he didn’t run for the office claiming to be Ben Affleck.

And this amendment, while claiming to revere democracy, could well lead to a total abortion ban in a state that just rejected such restrictions.

Abortion rights have been contested in Kansas for decades, but the origins of this particular push to remake the Supreme Court originate with its 2019 decision in Hodes and Nauser. The justices ruled that “Section 1 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights affords protection of the right of personal autonomy. … This right allows a woman to make her own decisions regarding her body, health, family formation, and family life — decisions that can include whether to continue a pregnancy.”

The Value Them Both amendment push of 2022 sought to overturn that finding and allow legislators to pass abortion limits. Advocates claimed the measure didn’t mean a ban on the procedure, but Kansas Reflector editor Sherman Smith revealed that officials told supporters that was exactly their intention.

The amendment failed by a nearly 20-point margin on Aug. 2, 2022, less than two months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and unleashed a wave of draconian restrictions across the country.

Less than two months later, then-attorney general candidate Kobach said what anti-abortion advocates had whispered. It was time to change tactics. If voters wouldn’t agree to ban abortion, it was time to enable the selection of state Supreme Court justices who would. That is, they needed to change the rules to win.

The Wichita Eagle’s Chance Swaim and Katie Bernard covered Kobach’s speech to the Wichita Pachyderm Club, where he proclaimed: “This issue is not over. The fight for life is going to continue.”

The Hodes decision created a huge problem for the movement, Kobach said: “There are two paths. One is to come in with a state constitutional amendment that corrects the decision. That’s what we just tried to do, and it didn’t work out. But there’s another path.”

He said the Legislature should pass another constitutional amendment, one exactly like the amendment appearing on ballots next month. That, he said, would allow advocates to “slowly and quietly” place anti-abortion justices on the court through popular elections.

In 2025, the Republican supermajorities in the Kansas House and Senate followed Kobach’s advice.

They followed their exact tactics from the last go-round, putting the judicial selection amendment on the low-turnout Aug. 4 primary ballot. Their hope, I believe, was and is to keep our state’s hefty number of unaffiliated voters from showing up. For reference, Kansas has more unaffiliated voters than registered Democrats.

Also in 2025, another high-ranking Republican made clear what he hoped to accomplish with the amendment. That would be Senate President Ty Masterson, who told the Marion County Patriots for Liberty in November that reversing the Hodes decision required electing judges.

“The solution in Kansas is that Supreme Court election,” he said. “But you can’t go out there and say it because they’ll say that if you elect your Supreme Court, you won’t have any right to abortion anymore.”

In other words, the Senate president and gubernatorial candidate said, you can’t tell the truth.

Neither Kobach nor Masterson have sought to deny or walk back their widely circulated statements, so I think we can take them as accurate representations of what top Kansas Republicans believe.

I’m not some wild-eyed alarmist out here (not to discourage the valuable work of other wild-eyed alarmists). The Kansas City Star’s Kacen Bayless reported last week about both the Kansas amendment and one in Missouri: “The two constitutional amendments could pave the way for Republicans to clamp down on abortion access for years to come. The votes illustrate a new playbook for abortion opponents after voters in both states recently protected the right to the procedure.”

The New York Times on Saturday reported similarly, under the headline: “Kansans Will Vote on an Elected Supreme Court. The Target: Abortion.”

If the amendment passes, any changes would all take time. The Legislature would have to create a framework for statewide judicial elections (the amendment itself offers few hard guidelines). The high court’s composition would shift gradually, as appointed justices departed and elected ones join.

Eventually, lawmakers could pass abortion restrictions with confidence that the court would find them constitutional. A ban would follow, soon as night follows day.

There’s more to it, of course. The amendment would affect many other issues and have broad implications for Kansas politics. As I wrote in May, it would fundamentally alter the state Supreme Court from a staid, merit-based body to one molded by out-of-control campaign spending and partisan rhetoric. School funding and LGBTQ+ rights could be shredded by a hostile new court.

But I keep coming back to abortion. Kansans wouldn’t be voting on the amendment next month otherwise.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.