Spielberg among donors in $22M Kansas campaign on abortion

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Abortion opponents and abortion rights advocates together spent more than $22 million on a ballot question this month in Kansas, and famed film director and producer Steven Spielberg contributed to the successful effort to affirm abortion rights.

Finance reports filed by 40 groups and individuals with the state as of this week showed that abortion rights supporters spent $11.3 million on their campaign to defeat a proposed amendment to the Kansas Constitution to allow the Republican-controlled Legislature to further restrict or ban abortion. Abortion opponents who pushed the measure spent nearly $11.1 million.

In Kansas' vote Aug. 2, the abortion rights side prevailed by 18 percentage points or 165,000 votes. It was the first state referendum on abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

“What it did was give huge fuel to the ”no" campaign because we didn’t any longer have to say to people, ‘This could happen or this might be what the Legislature will do,’ or any other hypothetical," said former two-term Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, also a former U.S. health and human services secretary. “They could watch in real time as Missouri shut down abortion.”

Two Republican activists have forced a hand recount of the Aug. 2 vote in nine counties accounting for 59% of the ballots cast, but it won't change the result. They have questioned the conduct of the election without providing evidence of problems.

Other Kansas abortion opponents argue that their cause was defeated mainly by out-of-state donors and groups with ties to abortion providers. Their proposed amendment would have overturned a 2019 Kansas Supreme Court decision protecting abortion rights.

“The no campaign’s most recent campaign finance report is a who’s who of...