Door By Door, A Small Group Of Kansans Changed The Abortion Debate

Just over a half-million people in Kansas radically altered the political debate about abortion on Tuesday. Not only did they vote to reject a referendum that would have removed abortion protections from the state constitution, but they did so by a double-digit margin, with a stunning surge of turnout, in a state that former President Donald Trump recently carried by 15 points.

This has either panicked or thrilled political consultants nationwide and filled Wednesday’s airwaves and newspaper columns with analysis. It was the first test of abortion rights after the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade in June, and the result was unambiguous.

But before the landslide win and talks of national political landscapes, it was mostly ordinary people like Janelle Bogart who were doing the real work. Bogart, a pro-choice organizer with a day job in sales, let HuffPost tag along as she canvassed houses in 103-degree heat in a Wichita suburb a week before the election.

One woman answered the door with a cat in her arm and a young son who came up to her hip. “Don’t worry, I’m voting no!” she said in regards to her vote in favor of abortion rights.

Bogart decided to skip the houses that had “Vote Yes for Value Them Both” lawn signs. She did her best to be as genial and warm as some residents watched from their lawns or eyed us from their pickup trucks while we zigzagged through the neighborhood.

While cheerful and friendly, Bogart’s take-no-shit energy is sugar-coated with some midwestern charm. It makes her extremely adept at knocking on strangers’ doors – especially those who don’t agree with her.

“Half the house is on one side, and half the house is on the other,” one older man who answered the door told Bogart. He walked out onto his porch with a barking Shih Tzu at his ankle. (One perk of canvassing, Bogart noted: “You get to meet a ton of cute pets.”)

The man politely declined Bogart’s pro-choice pamphlet multiple times before we made our exit. “Education is paramount!” Bogart told him while waving goodbye, before whispering to me: “He was definitely not taking my literature.”

Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, the pro-choice collective that recruited canvassers like Bogart, accomplished what many believed was impossible: A win on abortion rights in a red state after the fall of Roe.

Abortion is already heavily-regulated in Kansas, and Republicans had a lot of advantages going into the ballot initiative. The vote was held…