California Voters Narrowly Approve Same-Sex Marriage Ban

Kristina Haas, left, and Jennifer Briz leave a clerk's office after they were denied marriage at San Francisco City Hall the day after voters approved a same-sex marriage ban. (By Paul Sakuma -- Associated Press)

Social conservatives, however, also suffered defeats Tuesday when voters rejected limits on abortion in South Dakota and Colorado.

Colorado voters, by 73 percent to 27 percent, rejected a measure that would have defined human life as beginning at fertilization, raising the possibility that abortion would be made the legal equivalent of murder.

The South Dakota measure would have banned abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or a serious health threat to the woman. It failed 55 percent to 44 percent.

Sarah Stoesz, president of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, said polls in 2006 showed that a similar antiabortion measure defeated in the state that year would have passed overwhelmingly if it had included exceptions for rape and incest. But she said the organization worked over the past two years to educate voters and to have them "consider the issue in a very intense and personal way."

"People started thinking about what it might mean for a woman or a family to be confronted with a serious decision, and at the end of the day came to conclude this was not the place for government interference," she said. "The implications for our movement nationally are quite profound."

Advocates of marijuana reform scored two victories in Massachusetts and Michigan.

Massachusetts voters decriminalized possession of small amounts of the drug, eliminating criminal penalties for people caught with an ounce or less of marijuana. Michigan joined 12 other states in allowing the use of marijuana by very ill patients to relieve pain, nausea, appetite loss and other symptoms.

Michigan voters, by 53 percent to 47 percent, also approved lifting a 30-year ban on stem cell research that results in the destruction of an embryo. And Washington joined Oregon in voting to allow doctor-assisted suicide of terminally ill patients.

Staff writer Kari Lydersen in Chicago contributed to this report.