A bright spot: Voters in 7 states passed abortion rights

Amid the horrors of Tuesday's election, there was one bright spot: Seven states passed ballot measures to expand or enshrine the right to an abortion: Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and New York.

Abortion-rights ballot measures failed in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota—the first such measures to fail at the state level since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the constitutional right to abortion.

Florida's abortion-rights ballot measure—which would have nixed the state’s draconian six-week ban and protected the right to the procedure before fetal viability—got 57%, just shy of the 60% supermajority that it needed. This comes at the end of a long campaign from state Republicans against the measure.

And in Nebraska, a slim majority of voters voted to ban abortion after the first trimester—generally considered to be the end of the 12th week of pregnancy—except for cases of rape, incest, or in medical emergencies. A rights-restoring measure failed, securing just 49% of the vote. However, because there were conflicting measures on the ballot, the abortion-rights initiative would have also needed to get a higher share of the vote than the abortion-banning measure to become law.