Forbes: Voters reject abortion, gay marriage ban

In a triple setback for conservatives, South Dakota rejected a law that would have banned virtually all abortions, Arizona became the first state to defeat an amendment to ban gay marriage and Missouri approved a measure backing stem cell research.

Nationwide, a total of 205 measures were on the ballots Tuesday in 37 states, but none had riveted political activists across the country like the South Dakota measure. Passed overwhelmingly by the legislature earlier this year, it would have been the toughest abortion law in the nation, allowing the procedure only to save a pregnant woman's life.

Arizona bucked a strong national trend by refusing to change its constitution to define marriage as a one-man, one-woman institution. The measure also would have forbidden civil unions and domestic partnerships.

A total of eight states voted on amendments to ban gay marriage: Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin approved them. Similar amendments have passed previously in all 20 states to consider them.

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, noted that the bans that succeeded won by much narrower margins, on average, than in the past.

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