Abortion and the election: What the results mean — and what's next?

Published November 9, 2022 at 11:40 AM CST

A truck drives by campaign signs opposing and supporting a proposed amendment to the Vermont constitution that would guarantee access to reproductive rights, including abortion, by the side of the road in on Nov. 3, 2022 in Middlesex, Vt. (Wilson Ring/AP)

Voters in several states where abortion was on the ballot were generally favorable to abortion rights.

This summer’s U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning decades of abortion-rights precedent left the issue of abortion rights to the states. That raised the stakes for voters in several states — including Vermont, California, Michigan, Montana and Kentucky — with abortion-related questions on the ballot this year.

Sarah McCammon, NPR’s national correspondent who has been tracking the role of abortion access in the midterm elections, joins Here & Now‘s Robin Young to unpack the results.

And, abortion appears to have been a factor in the voting intentions of some people in key states. What can we draw from these results? And what can we expect next from both sides of the debate?

Elizabeth Nash, policy expert from the Guttmacher Institute, joins host Peter O’Dowd with the latest.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.