A record number of abortion initiatives will appear on state ballots this year—many of them in presidential battlegrounds.

Where is abortion on the ballot? 
Voters will be asked to make critical decisions about reproductive rights in 10 states on Election Day, ranging from liberal New York and Colorado to the battleground of Arizona to conservative Nebraska and South Dakota. Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, and Nevada will also have abortion initiatives on their ballots. Many of these measures, which would amend state constitutions, have faced strong opposition from Republican lawmakers and anti-abortion groups. Twenty-two states currently ban terminations in all or most cases, but if passed these amendments will radically remake the country’s map of abortion access, which has been shifting back and forth in a tug-of-war of restrictive laws and access-expanding ballot measures since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. “This is our best opportunity,” said Kelly Hall of the Fairness Project, which promotes progressive ballot measures in red and purple states. “Now is the moment.” 

What would the amendments do? 
Some aim to enshrine reproductive rights that residents already have under state law, while others would scrap restrictions. In Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, and Nevada, residents will vote on the right to abortion until fetal viability, the point at which a fetus can survive outside the uterus, generally considered about 24 weeks. Montana already provides access until viability, and abortion is legal in Nevada until 24 weeks. In New York, where terminations are legal until viability, an equal rights ballot measure does not mention abortion but would prohibit discrimination based on “pregnancy outcomes.” In Arizona, Florida, Missouri, and Nebraska, amendments would overturn strict bans, ranging from a total ban in Missouri to a 12-week restriction in Nebraska. Two competing measures will appear on ballots in Nebraska: one allowing abortion until viability and another that would prohibit abortion after the first trimester. If both win a majority of votes, the measure with more support will take effect. In South Dakota, which has a total ban with no exceptions for rape or incest, a measure would allow abortion during the first trimester. For abortion rights groups, the fact that such initiatives are appearing on the ballot at all is something of a victory. 

What obstacles have they faced? 
Activists say they have had to overcome legal challenges, administrative maneuvering by GOP officials, and at least one case of what pro-abortion rights campaigners describe as voter intimidation. In Missouri, Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft this month pulled an abortion amendment from the November ballot only for the state’s highest court to reinstate it. In Florida, the governor’s election police unit recently went door-to-door asking voters to confirm whether they’d signed a petition in support of a referendum to overturn the state’s six-week ban. “The experience left me shaken,” said Isaac Menasche, a Fort Myers voter. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis defended the move, claiming petition-gathering groups had submitted the names of dead people—despite the state having previously verified the more than 900,000 signatures collected. Florida’s health-care agency has also launched a website that states the amendment “threatens women’s safety,” and GOP lawmakers in other states have tried to dampen voter support for pro-abortion initiatives. Arizona’s Supreme Court in August approved an informational pamphlet about the state’s ballot measure to be sent to all voters that calls fetuses “unborn human beings.” Abortion rights activists say the language, authored by Republican lawmakers, equates abortion with murder. 

Are the amendments likely to pass? 
Polls show that about 60 percent of voters nationwide believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases, and majorities favor the passage of amendments in Arizona, Missouri, and South Dakota. An August poll also found that 56 percent of Floridians support their state’s Amendment 4. But while other states’ measures require a simple majority to be enacted, Florida’s needs 60 percent voter approval. Still, recent history is on the side of abortion rights campaigners. Voters in all seven states that have had abortion questions on their ballots since 2022—from blue California to red Kansas—have backed expanded access for the procedure. 

Will these ballot measures affect the presidential race? 
Democrats hope that mobilizing voters around abortion will drive support for both Vice President Kamala Harris, who has put defending reproductive rights at the heart of her campaign, and down-ballot candidates. “Abortion is a winning issue for us,” said Danielle Butterfield, executive director of Priorities USA, a Democratic Super PAC. The campaign arm of House Democrats is focusing intensely on 18 races in states with abortion ballot amendments where the party is playing defense or hopes to flip a GOP-held district. It could be a smart strategy: Among swing state voters, abortion is the second most important issue, after the economy. For women under 45, it’s number one. But a Politico analysis of five state abortion rights initiatives passed since 2022 found the success of those measures was driven largely by Republicans voting for abortion access and for GOP candidates. Abortion measures aren’t “necessarily a death knell for Republicans,” said Stan Barnes, political consultant and former GOP state senator in Arizona. “But it is a net negative.”

Blocking abortion from the ballot 
In Arkansas, reproductive rights campaigners this year collected some 101,000 signatures in favor of an amendment that would legalize abortion until 20 weeks, overturning the state’s near-total ban. That was roughly 10,000 more signatures than required to get the proposal before voters in November—but election officials in the GOP-led state tossed the initiative on a technicality. While the overwhelming majority of signatures were gathered by volunteers, officials said the campaign failed to properly file documentation about canvassers it paid and so the whole petition was moot. Campaign organizers submitted a signed affidavit with a list of paid canvassers, but the state maintained that the document needed to be signed by the canvassing company, rather than the initiative itself. The leaders of two Arkansas ballot measures related to medical marijuana and gambling defended the abortion rights campaign, saying their petitions had similar issues but were certified. Arkansas’ Supreme Court upheld election officials’ decision last month. “Regnat Populus—The People Rule—is the motto of Arkansas,” Justices Karen Baker and Courtney Rae Hudson wrote in their dissent. “Today’s decision strips every Arkansan of this power.”

The football season is only in its fourth week, “and already the issue of concussions has interrupted our regularly scheduled programming,” said Jason Page in MSNBC. Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s career—and brain health—are in jeopardy after he suffered a concussion two weeks ago, his third diagnosed concussion since 2022. He crashed headlong into a defender and fell hard to the turf, with his arms going into a stiff pose called “the fencing response,” indicating serious brain injury— the second time that’s happened to him. “In an era of heightened awareness of concussions,” Tagovailoa, 26, may be the greatest “walking case study.” He’s on injured reserve for a month while neurologists study his injured brain. His mother encouraged him to quit, as did Las Vegas Raiders coach Antonio Pierce. But Tagovailoa reportedly has no plan to retire. At what point does the league “need to protect Tua from Tua?” 

The NFL “isn’t going to save Tagovailoa from himself,” said Jemele Hill in The Atlantic. If doctors insist he retire, he gets $167 million of the $212 million contract he recently signed, but if he’s medically cleared and chooses to walk away, he may forfeit most of it. It’s “a small sign of progress” that prominent voices within football are advising him to retire, bucking “the old hyper-macho culture of playing through any injury.” Still, players continue to sign up “to play a violent game” despite the risk of long-term brain damage—“and if you think the sight of Tagovailoa writhing on the ground is enough to turn fans off,” you underestimate the degree to which football remains a “national obsession.” 

But there’s no longer any “plausible deniability about the consequences” of playing this “irre- deemably unsafe” sport, said Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva in The Guardian. Every 2.6 years that an athlete plays tackle football, studies show, his risk of developing the neurodegenerative disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) doubles—“and kids start playing this sport at 5 years old.” The NFL essentially has a “PR approach to concussions,” said Dave Zirin in The Nation. It adopted loose concussion protocols to protect its billions in profits, not the players. “Head injuries are part of the product,” and if Tagovailoa returns, every game he plays “will be stalked by the possibility of tragedy.”

Kathy Griffin has a name for the many woes that followed her 2018 photo shoot with a facsimile of Donald Trump’s severed head, said Mikey O’Connell in The Hollywood Reporter. The comedian calls them “the laundry list” and they include: being investigated for threatening the president, unemployment, death threats, anxiety attacks, PTSD, attempted suicide, lung cancer, vocal-cord damage, and divorce.

Now mounting her first major comedy tour since 2018, Griffin, 63, only travels by private jet. “I know it’s spoiled, but it’s worth it,” she says. “I get to avoid the airport, where a lot of Trumpers still feel the need to tell me how horrible I am.” She knows she should care less about what anonymous strangers think, and says she was recently told as much by an acquaintance, R&B legend Chaka Khan. “She tells me, ‘I’ve been watching you for a long time, and your whole thing is, like, you don’t give a f---. But until you really don’t give a f---, you won’t be free.’ And Chaka’s right. Shit still bothers me.” Trump still bothers her, too. But she’s even angrier at the friends who abandoned her after that photo. “I did not whip out my penis like Louis [C.K.]. I wasn’t canceled. I was investigated by the Department of Justice for something I don’t regret.”