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How Ballot Measures Will Change Abortion Access

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How Ballot Measures Will Change Abortion Access

How abortion rights measures fared

Abortion rights found support at the ballot box in seven states on Tuesday, expanding access in already legal states and lifting bans in two others.

But support for abortion rights fell short in three contests. Proposed rights measures failed in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota — and in Nebraska, an opposing measure to restrict abortion won — meaning bans and restrictions will remain in place.

Abortion will become broadly legal again in Arizona and Missouri, and existing protections will be strengthened in at least four other states.

How abortion laws will change

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*Note: In Nevada, a winning measure to protect abortion until viability must pass again in the next general election before it can be added to the state’s Constitution.

In Florida, more than 57 percent of voters supported a measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s Constitution, but it failed because the state requires a supermajority of 60 percent for ballot measures to pass. Florida had been a critical access point for abortion patients across the South before a six-week ban took effect in May.

Nebraska voters faced dueling abortion ballot measures, and misleading ad campaigns may have caused confusion. A measure that will amend the state’s Constitution to restrict abortions after the first trimester, enshrining current law, won a majority of votes, while a measure to protect abortion rights fell just short at 49 percent.

South Dakota will continue to have one of the strictest bans in the country.

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Before the election, 21 states banned abortion or placed gestational limits on the procedure. The winning rights measure in Missouri is the first to undo a full ban — one of the strictest in the nation and one of the first enacted after the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Arizona’s 15-week ban will also become void in the coming weeks.

Where ballot measures will lift abortion bans

Five states with bans had abortion on the ballot. Two flipped to legalize the procedure.

In Arizona, Missouri and Montana, the winning measures will recreate the standard set by Roe v. Wade, which protected abortion until “viability” — the point at which a fetus could survive outside the uterus, or around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

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New constitutional amendments will expand protections for abortion in Colorado, Maryland and New York, where the procedure was already broadly legal. Colorado’s measure also repealed an earlier law prohibiting the use of public funds to pay for abortions.

In Nevada, a winning measure to protect abortion until viability must pass again in the next general election before it can be added to the state’s Constitution.

Abortion ballot measures since Roe v. Wade was overturned

Results as of 11:30 a.m. Eastern, Nov. 6.

Arizona Nov. 5, 2024

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Right to abortion until fetal viability

Colorado Nov. 5, 2024

Right to abortion and public funding

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Maryland Nov. 5, 2024

Right to reproductive freedom

Missouri Nov. 5, 2024

Right to abortion until fetal viability

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Montana Nov. 5, 2024

Right to abortion until fetal viability

Nebraska Nov. 5, 2024

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Ban on abortion after the first trimester

Nevada Nov. 5, 2024

Right to abortion until fetal viability

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New York Nov. 5, 2024

Equal rights including protection from pregnancy discrimination

Florida Nov. 5, 2024

Right to abortion until fetal viability

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Nebraska Nov. 5, 2024

Right to abortion until fetal viability

South Dakota Nov. 5, 2024

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Right to abortion in the first trimester

Ohio Nov. 7, 2023

Right to reproductive freedom

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Vermont Nov. 8, 2022

Right to reproductive freedom

California Nov. 8, 2022

Right to reproductive freedom

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Michigan Nov. 8, 2022

Right to reproductive freedom

Montana Nov. 8, 2022

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Medical care requirements for “infants born alive”

Kentucky Nov. 8, 2022

Remove abortion rights protections

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Kansas Aug. 2, 2022

Remove abortion rights protections

The 2024 election broke a ballot measure winning streak for abortion rights advocates. Voters in seven states, including Republican-led ones, had previously sided with abortion rights in every contest since the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022.

Advocates for abortion rights caution that opportunities to protect those rights through ballot measures may be dwindling. Most remaining states with abortion bans do not allow citizen-initiated measures to be placed on the ballot, and their Republican leaders are unlikely to put the issue to voters.

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And while former President Donald J. Trump has most recently said he would leave abortion laws to the states if re-elected, abortion rights organizations are bracing for federal action on abortion under his presidency.

“Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States is a deadly threat to reproductive rights,” said Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “We have many states that protect abortion rights, and if a federal ban passes they will lose that ability to protect their residents’ access.”

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Video: Can Democrats Overcome G.O.P. Gerrymandering?

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Video: Can Democrats Overcome G.O.P. Gerrymandering?

new video loaded: Can Democrats Overcome G.O.P. Gerrymandering?

Our chief political analyst, Nate Cohn, who writes The Tilt newsletter, looks at the Republicans’ advantage in the House of Representatives after partisan redistricting. To win the House, how much of the popular vote would Democrats need to win?

By Nate Cohn, Laura Bult, June Kim, Edward Vega and Pierre Kattar

June 11, 2026

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A Nebraska immigration raid shut businesses down a year ago. The fallout is ongoing, officials say.

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A Nebraska immigration raid shut businesses down a year ago. The fallout is ongoing, officials say.

The results echo some of the findings from recent nationwide workforce studies on the economic impact of last year’s immigration raids.

A Brookings Institution study found that last year’s immigration enforcement surge across the nation cost 668,000 jobs, and those losses affected both immigrant and U.S.-born workers. Another study from the University of Colorado Boulder found immigration enforcement didn’t expand opportunities for U.S.-born workers and instead reduced employment for some of them.

‘Unlike anything we had ever seen’

Of the 76 people immigration authorities arrested at Glenn Valley Foods, close to 10 self-deported, Garcia told NBC News on Tuesday. Others who were also detained were eventually granted bond and reunited with their families, though many of them are still facing immigration proceedings.

“They have this constant pressure of being tied up in that system that might ultimately lead to deportation eventually,” said Garcia, who is the first Latino commissioner of Douglas County, where Omaha is located.

Garcia’s family was also among those directly affected by the raids. His wife’s aunt was among the meatpacking workers taken into immigration custody.

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The woman, a mother of three U.S.-born children, spent a couple of months in detention before she was released on bond. Garcia said his wife’s aunt was granted a temporary work permit — alongside others who had been detained — while they wait for their next immigration court hearing.

Luis Mejía, 20, said he went to work last June at Glenn Valley Foods “thinking it would be a normal day.” The Nebraska native who was raised in South Omaha said everything changed that morning when immigration officers entered their workplace.

Luis Mejia, a lifelong Nebraska resident, in an interview in Omaha on Tuesday.WOWT

As some ran away in fear, Mejía’s immigrant mother hugged him and told him to take care of his younger siblings. Then, she ran with the others.

Meanwhile, immigration officers asked Mejía to show proof of U.S. citizenship.

“I didn’t know how to do that since I’ve never been asked that before. I looked at the officer with confusion and told him I was born here,” Mejía recalled. The officers cleared him to go after looking him up in their system.

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A couple of hours after authorities let him go, Mejía received a call from his mother, telling him she had been detained. After that, Mejía didn’t hear from her for a few days while she was in detention.

She was one of the at least 63 workers who were taken to the Lincoln County Detention Center, four hours away.

The situation forced Mejía and his older brother to provide for their two younger siblings while not knowing if they would get to see their mother again.

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We Keep Us Safe: The Standoff : Embedded

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We Keep Us Safe: The Standoff : Embedded

EPISODE 2: In the summer of 2020, protests are happening all across the country. But Seattle is different. A confrontation between protestors and police outside a precinct leads to the birth of CHOP. A thousand miles away, Antonio Mays Jr. hears about what’s happening in Seattle. He was shot and killed there three weeks later.

Listen to Embedded wherever you get your podcasts, including NPR App, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and RSS.

Support journalism like this by signing up for NPR+ at plus.npr.org

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Additional reporting by David Gutman. Produced by Dan Girma, with Adelina Lancianese and Abby Wendle. Edited by Luis Trelles, Laura Greanias and Katie Simon. Fact checking and research by Dania Suleman and Miyoko Wolf. Mastering by Jimmy Keeley.

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