Tears of joy as Kansas celebrates abortion rights win

In a conference room at the Sheraton in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, people screamed, whooped, cheered and cried as a vote to protect abortion rights in Kansas's state constitution came down late last Tuesday night.

- Poppy Noor

And it wasn't just Democrats.

James Quigley, 72, a retired doctor and a Republican from Johnson county, sat on his own drinking a glass of white wine after hearing the news. "Abortion is a much more nuanced issue than anti-choice individuals would have you think," he told the Guardian. "It is deeply personal, sometimes tragic, but also sometimes a liberating decision - and we should trust women, their physicians and their God on that."

The result had been eagerly awaited, as Kansas was the first state in the country to put abortion rights on the ballot since Roe v Wade, which federally guaranteed them, was overturned by the supreme court.

The victory and its sheer scale in a usually reliably Republican and socially conservative state like Kansas - has sent shock waves through the US and provided a shot in the arm for efforts to protect abortion rights.

It was a dirty fight, made murkier by the referendum being phrased so that a "yes" vote would, counterintuitively, have overturned the constitutional right to abortion in the state.