Prescott Valley, AZ Correspondent — We now have evidence rather than a prediction, which is the difference between answering this in July and answering it in December.
Six states put the question directly to voters this year. Kansas in August, then five more in November. In every case the outcome favored the less restrictive position, including in Kentucky and Montana.
That’s a meaningful finding about where the median voter sits, and it’s a finding that survived being tested in states nobody expected.
What it suggests is that the return to democratic politics is working as a mechanism and producing results that surprised the people who wanted the return.
Wheeling, WV Correspondent — The Court moved the decision to elected legislatures, and in my state that’s where it stayed, because we have no initiative process.
I said this in July and the November results confirm the point. Where the question went to voters directly it went one way. Where it went to legislatures it frequently went the other, and both are called democratic politics.
That gap is the sustainability problem. If the legislature and the electorate of the same state produce opposite answers, the argument doesn’t end. It relocates.
Bismarck, ND Correspondent — Back to state politics, with polarization staying high for a while.
Our version is a trigger law and litigation, and the practical effect out here is distance. The nearest provider for a substantial part of this state is now several hundred miles away and across a line.
That’s the reality the abstraction sits on top of, and it’s why “the states will decide” is a less complete sentence in a place with three people per square mile.
Gastonia, NC Correspondent — States will decide and that can lower the national temperature if the results are allowed to stand.
The November evidence complicates my July answer and I’d rather say so than pretend it didn’t.
I expected variation. What we got in the six direct votes was consistency, and consistency across Kansas and Michigan and Kentucky is not the pattern a federalism argument predicts. It suggests the country is less divided on this than its legislatures are, which is an awkward finding for anybody arguing the legislatures are the voice of the people.
Long Island, NY Correspondent — Returning a question to legislatures is what a constitution does when the text doesn’t settle it, and sustainability depends on whether both sides let a legislature be a legislature.
The legal development I’d flag is that the interstate question has arrived faster than anyone predicted. Prosecutions for conduct legal where it occurred, subpoenas across state lines, shield statutes passed in anticipation.
That’s the constitutional problem the decision deferred rather than solved. Full faith and credit and the privileges of citizenship don’t have obvious answers here and they’re going to be litigated for a decade.
So: returned to the states, and not in a way that keeps it there.
Tyler, Texas Correspondent — Texas will write Texas law and New York will write New York law. That’s a country rather than a temple.
I’d concede the November results plainly. Voters in six states, including two I’d have called safe, went the other way. That’s information and I’m not going to explain it away by attacking the ballot summaries, which is what my side mostly did.
If the argument is that this should be decided democratically, then it was, and the answers came back. Some of them will be answers I don’t like. That was always the deal.
Cheyenne, WY Correspondent — Let the legislature work. That’s the holding.
Nationalizing every clinic fight is a choice rather than a destiny.
What I’d add after November is that the people arguing hardest for the state venue should be prepared for what the state venue produces. We asked for the vote. Some places voted.
Knoxville, Tennessee Correspondent — Appalachia had this argument at the kitchen table before it had a statute.
Sustainable if we let it be. Intensified if every state outcome becomes a national fundraising event, which is what the last six months have mostly been.
The travel question is where this stops being abstract in a border county. People here are two hours from three different legal regimes and they’re using them, and no state statute controls what somebody does in another state without raising a constitutional question nobody wants to answer.
Myrtle Beach, SC Correspondent — Our legislature spent the autumn on this and couldn’t agree, which is itself informative.
A body with a large majority on one side failed to pass what its own leadership proposed, because members who’d voted for a position when it was theoretical found it different when it was operative.
That’s democratic politics working, uncomfortably. It also means the law here is currently whatever the courts last said, which satisfies nobody.
Clermont, Florida Correspondent — Florida runs Florida’s process and the process is a legislature and a state supreme court.
What I’d say from the business side is that this has become a factor in recruitment in a way I didn’t anticipate. I have clients who’ve had candidates decline positions over it, and that’s new and it’s measurable.
That’s a mechanism nobody designed. Variation between states produces movement between states, and movement is how a federal question eventually returns.
Sheffield, Jamaica Correspondent — I’ll offer the outside note that a federation permitting variation on a contested moral question is doing what federations are for.
What strikes me is the assumption in the question that polarization and state-level resolution are alternatives. They needn’t be. Ireland and my own region have had this argument and resolved it by referendum, and the resolution was durable because it was a vote rather than a court.
Your November results look more like that than like the fragmentation everyone predicted. Whether your politics can accept a vote it didn’t like is the actual test, and that isn’t a question about abortion.
Owatonna, MN Correspondent — Minnesota’s law didn’t change because our court had already decided the question under our own constitution, which is worth noting as an example of federalism working before anyone announced it.
On sustainability I’d be cautious about drawing too much from November. Ballot questions ask something narrower than a legislature does, and a voter can support a limit and also vote against a specific measure they find extreme.
The results tell you the maximalist positions lose. They don’t tell you where the settlement is, and the settlement is what sustainability requires.
