To those of our readers wondering how in Sam Hill the Wall Street Journal managed to get out before we did an editorial on the Kansas abortion referendum let us just say we’re happy to confess — we’re a slow reader. Particularly compared to the Journal’s editor, Paul Gigot, who once read the entire United States Code over breakfast. There is a reason he is known as the Usain Bolt of the law. 

When our deadline came, we were still parsing the ballot instructions. We got hung up on the first phrase of the “explanatory statement.” It began, “The Value Them Both Amendment …” Them Both who? We mumbled to ourselves. The explanatory statement merely explained that the proposed amendment would “affirm there is no Kansas constitutional right to abortion or to require the government funding of abortion.”

We never did figure out what it meant by affirming that there is neither a Kansas constitutional right “to abortion or to require the government funding of abortion.” Does the constitution of any state grant its government “rights” and do any of those “rights” encompass a “right to require the government funding of abortion”? What about a right to “deny the government funding of abortion”? Is this amendment, in any event, about funding?

We gave up on that question. We were happy to discover that the proposed amendment would, as the ballot put it, “reserve to the people of Kansas, through their elected legislators, the right to pass laws to regulate abortion.” And to discover that this would include regulating abortion in “circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest” or, it adds, “when necessary to save the life of the mother.”  

Then came the actual ballot question: “Shall the following be adopted?” Then it explained the business about “value them both.” By “both,” it turns out, the ballot refers to “both women and children.” Never mind the blasted men. The reason Kansas does not require government funding of abortion or “create or secure a right to abortion” turns out to be because Kansans value, again, “both women and children.” 

At this point, the ballot question defers to the United States Constitution. To the extent permitted by that parchment, it says,  “the people, through their elected state representatives and state senators, may pass laws regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, laws that account for circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, or circumstances of necessity to save the life of the mother.”

There you have it. We would have voted “yes.” By then, though, Kansans had decided otherwise. The only thing left for us to do was quarrel with the blasted title of the measure, the business about “The Value Them Both Amendment.” We’d have preferred “The Samuel Alito Trusts the People of Kansas Amendment.” We would have called Mr. Gigot to tip our hat, but we figured he’d taken dinner early and was sleeping the sleep of the first.