THE CLOSER

Can red-state voters be persuaded to protect abortion? This organizer has done it twice.

- Abby Vesoulis

RACHEL SWEET CAN'T pinpoint a specific moment or life experience that inspired her to pursue a career fighting for reproductive rights. As a 31-year-old woman, she had always had the right to choose. She grew up in a Kansas City, Missouri, suburb, as part of a politically engaged family that often talked about liberal values. In college, she interned at Planned Parenthood. After graduating, she joined the policy team for Kansas City's mayor, and part of her work focused on public health issues.

"I don't have a good story," Sweet says. "I have never been pregnant. I've never had an abortion. I just know lots of people who have had abortions, and I love and care about them."

She also knows how to win. In 2022, she defeated two anti-abortion ballot measures in traditionally red states first as the campaign manager of the group credited with successfully toppling an August referendum in Kansas, and second in Kentucky, where she similarly defeated another ballot measure in November.

These victories not only served as an emotional salve to widespread anguish among pro-choice Americans after the Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, but now stand as a guide for abortion rights organizers fighting right-wing politicians and conservative courts in red states.

The Kansas measure had been put on the ballot long before Dobbs gutted Roe v. Wade and shifted the power of regulating the medical procedure to individual states, making it the earliest test of how the issue would play with voters newly charged with such decisions.