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Shortly after the SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade, states began taking their own measures for and against abortion. Kansas took an interesting turn.

Despite the apparent redundancy under the rule of Roe,

a 2019 Kansas Supreme Court ruling ..., in response to an attempt to ban a common second trimester abortion procedure, said Kansans had a right to bodily autonomy and therefore the right to terminate a pregnancy.
The Kansas City Star

But after Roe was struck down, the Value Them Both ballot measure sought to invalidate that 2019 Kansas Court decision through a state constitutional amendment that would allow legislation on abortion. Specifically, the amendment would have declared there is no Kansas constitutional right to abortion.

Kansas voters rejected the proposed measure, upholding that 2019 court decision.

My question is, what duty to this vote do future courts have, if any? Can the Kansas Supreme Court still vote to overturn that 2019 ruling, as the SCOTUS overturned Roe? Is Kansas abortion still hinged solely on Court decisions?

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My question is, what duty to this vote do future courts have, if any? Can the Kansas Supreme Court still vote to overturn that 2019 ruling, as the SCOTUS overturned Roe? Is Kansas abortion still hinged solely on Court decisions?

Pretty much. That's part of the problem Roe had, in that no Federal law backed it up. Courts can, and do, reverse themselves all the time. The key now is that the makeup of the Kansas Supreme Court is unlikely to change anytime soon from the 2019 justices who made this ruling 7-1.

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  • Agree. thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/05/51839 gives some background, though not necessarily from a pro-choice PoV. The court seems to have interpreted K's constitution to grant a natural right, which includes abortion. Which does not seem entirely unlike the right to privacy interpretation in Roe which another court disagreed with. That said, 60/40 is a big spread and unlikely to give much leeway to the court to claim that they are in line with public sentiment, rather than imposing their morality on others.
    – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica
    Aug 8, 2022 at 23:51
  • jdsupra.com/legalnews/… for Florida where DeSantis is trying to put in anti-abortion laws has an apparently clearer privacy clause.
    – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica
    Aug 8, 2022 at 23:55
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what duty to this vote do future courts have, if any?

They have to abide by the state's constitution, which was unchanged as a result of this vote.

Can the Kansas Supreme Court still vote to overturn that 2019 ruling, as the SCOTUS overturned Roe?

I don't know anything about what Kansas law says about precedent or about the conditions under which its supreme court can overturn its own precedent, but provided that there's nothing else already present in Kansas law that forbids it, yes.

Is Kansas abortion still hinged solely on Court decisions?

Probably not. There must be some statutory and regulatory provisions that affect abortion. For example, there are probably restrictions that apply in the third trimester, and there are certainly legislative or regulatory restrictions on who can perform abortions.

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