Kansas abortion rights advocate hoping for encore defeat of constitutional amendment in August vote
- Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector
- 59 minutes ago
- 4 min read
By Sherman Smith
Kansas Reflector
LAWRENCE — Kansas Abortion Fund president Sandy Brown wants Kansans to show up in August and repeat their 2022 decision to defeat a constitutional amendment that could upend abortion rights in the state.
Four years ago, voters by a 59-41 margin defeated a proposal to overturn a Kansas Supreme Court ruling that established the right to terminate a pregnancy. This year, the proposal would eliminate the merit-based system for selecting state Supreme Court justices and make them elected positions instead.
Proponents of the amendment, including Senate President Ty Masterson, see it as a way of electing conservative justices who will provide more partisan rulings on issues like abortion and school finance.
“People need to stand up like they did before in 2022 and just ram it down their throats,” Brown said on the Kansas Reflector podcast. “Put up your yard signs, make a donation, get online.”
Brown has led the all-volunteer, Lawrence-based nonprofit for the past 13 years. The Kansas Abortion Fund brings in about $400,000 in grants and donations each year to cover the costs of Kansas women seeking an abortion, regardless of their financial status. In 2025, they served 1,328 individuals — about 27% of the total number of Kansas women who received an abortion.
“They probably wouldn’t know about us, the person who is pregnant and needs help, until they go to the clinic, and we work directly with the clinics,” Brown said.
The organization began in 1996 as a small group of women in Lawrence who had a phone tree and helped women who needed an abortion. For a while, it was known as the Peggy Bowman Second Chance Fund, in honor of a prominent advocate for women’s rights.
Bowman was a lobbyist for George Tiller, the Wichita abortion provider who was murdered in 2009 in his church by an anti-abortion zealot. When Bowman died of heart failure in 2016, her obituary read: “Her condition was undoubtedly aggravated by the catastrophe known as Sam Brownback and Kris Kobach.”
Brown said the work of the Kansas Abortion Fund evolved after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The ruling, just weeks ahead of the Kansas vote in 2022, left decisions about reproductive health care up to individual states. The most recent data from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment shows that three-fourths of the 19,000 women who received an abortion in Kansas in 2024 were from out of state.
The Kansas Abortion Fund only helps in-state patients, but Brown said the organization can connect out-of-state patients with other resources.
Brown said she “wasn’t surprised at all” by the 2022 vote, even though it was an unexpected landslide for most political observers.
“We had the polling and we had the energy behind us,” Brown said. “I wasn’t really surprised. Relieved, yes.”
Kansas voters, she said, are “the salt of the earth, and you start talking about taking precious rights away from us, like bodily autonomy, you know, that’s just going way overboard for us.”
This time, however, she said it is more of a challenge to inform voters about what’s at stake with the Aug. 4 ballot question. She said the wording of the proposed constitutional amendment is complicated.
It reads: “The citizens of Kansas who are qualified electors shall have the right to elect the justices of the supreme court. The rules applicable for such elections and the designation of position numbers shall be provided by law. Justice positions 1, 2 and 3 shall be elected at the general election in November of 2028, justice positions 4 and 5 in November of 2030 and justice positions 6 and 7 in November of 2032, and every six years thereafter, respectively. Any vacancy occurring on the supreme court for an unexpired term shall be filled at the next even-year election for the remainder of such term by election as provided by law.”
The amendment also strikes other parts of the constitution, including a prohibition against justices engaging in political activities.
In simple terms, according to Brown: “It turns our justices into campaigning politicians. It’s terrifying.”
The Marion County Record in December reported that Masterson, the Senate president from Andover who is seeking the GOP nomination for governor, told a Patriots for Liberty group that electing justices would reverse Supreme Court decisions on abortion rights.
“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,” Masterson said.
He added: “If we elect our Supreme Court, they won’t force you to spend money on schools.”
Brown said supporters of the amendment have an advantage when it comes to messaging. If someone asks, “Hey, you want to vote,” most people will say, “Sure,” she said.
But she remains optimistic that voters will understand what’s at stake as the election gets closer.
“I know that Kansans will rise to the occasion, and they will understand that this is about overturning abortion protections,” she said. “This is about electing Supreme Court justices where big money will be thrown in. And we all know what that what that’s going to look like. It’s going to get ugly.”
This article was republished with permission from the Kansas Reflector. The Kansas Reflector is a non-profit online news organization serving Kansas. For more information on the organization, go to its website at www.kansasreflector.com.
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