Missouri voters approve measure to protect abortion rights

ST. LOUIS — Missouri voters have approved an amendment to the state constitution that will protect reproductive rights.
Amendment 3 passed two years after Missouri became the first state to outlaw abortion following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which ended nearly five decades of precedent for abortion rights. The state’s ban had no exceptions except for “serious risk of the health of the pregnant woman.”
Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the campaign backing the measure, collected more than 380,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot.
Amendment 3, which earned 53 percent of the vote, will add language to the state constitution that guarantees a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom” — the right to make decisions about reproductive care, which includes both abortion and contraceptives. It is set to take effect in 30 days, according to state Missouri law, though it will likely be challenged in court.
Madeline Kennell, 25, said she voted “yes” on the amendment because, as a health care worker, she sees the effects of the state’s near-total ban on people looking for care.
“I’m a nurse. I work in emergency medicine and I’ve seen a lot of negative things happen because of not having access to basic reproductive health rights,” she said.
For Kennell, it comes down to people having the right to make their own decision.
She voted yes “not just for myself, but for a lot of people to just have the choice, you know, whether you want to access those rights or not,” she said.
Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, wrote a letter to voters in October, asking them to vote against the measure.
“The language of this amendment was written by lawyers and pro-abortion activist groups, and limits Missourians’ and their elected representatives’ ability to deliberate on health and safety standards for women and children,” he wrote.
Before the polls closed, Brian Westbrook with Coalition Life, an organization opposing the measure, said he was optimistic it would fail.
“We are very excited to see the grassroots effort here, we’ve seen it traveling all across the state from one state to another and we have seen grassroots movement like never before,” he said.
Missouri is one of 10 states that had abortion measures on the ballot this election. As of publishing time, states like Colorado and New York passed their measures, while Florida’s amendment failed. .
LIVE RESULTS: Abortion on the ballot
St. Louis University and YouGov conducted an online survey in August that asked 900 likely Missouri voters about everything from abortion to gun policy. When presented with the exact language and provisions of the abortion amendment, 52 percent of respondents said they supported the ballot measure, while 34 percent opposed it, with 14 percent undecided.
Steve Rodgers, the SLU/YouGov director, said researchers had also previously surveyed respondents with the measure’s language in February.
When comparing the two sets of responses, researchers noticed an 8 percent increase in support.
This data is reflective of recent national polling as well. Around 6 in 10 Americans think their state should generally allow a person to obtain a legal abortion if they don’t want to be pregnant for any reason, according to a July poll from the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago.
Zackeya Morris, 28, said while abortion is not for her, she still believes people should have a right to choose for themselves.
“I don’t have anything against people who do have abortions because people have their reasons and, at the same time, it’s none of my business because it’s not my body and I don’t have to live with that decision,” she said. “It should not have even been a question because Roe v. Wade should never have been overturned, because who are you to tell someone what they can and cannot do to their body?”
The constitutional amendment also says any governmental interference in reproductive health care, including abortion and contraceptives, is invalid. It also forbids the government from discriminating against using funding programs or activities pertaining to reproductive health care. The amendment also allows for laws that ban abortion after the point of fetal viability, with exceptions to protect the life of a pregnant person.
When asked for a statement on the amendment, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley’s office pointed to comments the senator, who won another termin the Senate is up for reelection this year, made during a debate in October.
“I think it’s absolutely vital that we protect our women and children in the state and that’s why I can’t support legislation that would allow sex changes for minors without parental consent,” Hawley said during an exchange on the matter.
In a June interview with PBS News about state GOP efforts to keep abortion off of the ballot, the senator said though he is “pro life” and believes in exceptions for “rape, incest, and the life of the mother,” he still believes the peple have a right to decide on the issue.
“I just think voters deserve to be able to debate this among themselves, talk it out and vote on it and have control of the issue. That’s where it belongs,” he said.
Both Westbrook with Coalition Life and Gov. Parson cited the same point, noting different parts of the amendment, such as the use of the word “person,” as the reason.
A campaign sign asks voters to “Vote No on 3,” outside a Planned Parenthood clinic on St. Louis’ Central West End hours before the polls closed. Photo by Gabrielle Hays/PBS News
However, the amendment does not include anything specifically about sex changes for minors without parental consent and multiple experts have argued the amendment would not include anything outside of reproductive care and it is unlikely that courts would perceive it that way.
Republicans in the state spent months trying to keep the initiative off the ballot.
After a state auditor estimated the potential public cost of the amendment to be around $51,000, following a procedure a judge would later say had been consistent for the last decade, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey refused to accept it, citing his own estimate of $6.9 trillion.
Cole County Circuit Court Judge Jon Beetem ruled in June that Bailey had no right to “inflate” the costs of the measure.
“The Attorney General also has no authority to substitute his own judgment for that of the Auditor regarding the estimated cost of a proposed measure as part of his review and approval of its legal content and form,” Beetem said in a scathing judgment. He then ordered Bailey to approve the measures within the next 24 hours.
Bailey did not meet the deadline to certify the measure, and filed an appeal to the state Supreme Court.
In the end, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled against the attorney general. In a 4-3 decision, court affirmed “the Secretary’s certification approving Amendment 3 for the ballot was correct, that the circuit court’s judgment rejecting that certification was reversed.”