Missouri abortion-rights amendment faces last-minute legal challenges
COLUMBIA, Missouri — Both sides in the debate over whether to include abortion rights in Missouri’s Constitution have taken last-minute legal action in hopes of influencing whether and how the bill goes before voters.
Missouri banned nearly all abortions immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. In response, a campaign to restore abortion access in the state has emerged, pushing for a constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to abortion.
According to JoDonn Chaney, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, the courts have until Sept. 10 to make changes to the November ballot.
With the deadline looming, two Republican state lawmakers and a prominent anti-abortion leader filed a lawsuit last week seeking to have the amendment rejected.
Thomas More Society Senior Counsel Mary Catherine Martin, who represents the plaintiffs, said in a statement that Ashcroft’s office should never have put the amendment on the November ballot. She said the measure fails to inform voters of the array of abortion regulations and laws that will be repealed if the amendment passes.
“It is a scorched earth campaign that strips our state statute books of essential protections for vulnerable women and children, innocent unborn children, parents and every taxpayer who does not want their money used for abortion and other extreme decisions defined in this amendment as ‘care,’” Martin said.
There are no hearings scheduled yet in this case.
The abortion rights campaign is also suing Ashcroft over his office’s handling of the measure.
“A ‘yes’ vote will enshrine in the Missouri Constitution the right to abortion at any point during pregnancy,” the ballot measure, drafted by the secretary of state’s office, said. “It will also prohibit any regulation of abortion, including regulations designed to protect women who have an abortion, and prohibit any civil or criminal action against anyone who performs an abortion and injures or kills the pregnant woman.”
A lawsuit seeking to rewrite that text argues that the measure allows lawmakers to regulate abortions after fetal viability has been achieved and allows lawsuits for medical malpractice and wrongful death.
Ashcroft’s language is “intentionally argumentative and is likely to create prejudice against the proposed measure,” attorneys wrote in the petition.
Chaney said the secretary of state’s office stands by the current description of the measure and that “the court can review that information, as it often does.”
This isn’t the first time Ashcroft has clashed with the abortion rights campaign. Last year, Missouri Courts Rejected a proposed voting record for the amendment drafted by Ashcroft, which found his description to be politically partisan.
The lawsuit filed by the abortion rights campaign will be heard on September 4.
The Missouri Amendment is part of a national push to get voters speaking out on abortion since the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Measures to protect access have already gone before voters this year in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Montana, Nevada and South Dakota, as well as Missouri.
Legal battles have erupted across the country over whether voters should be allowed to decide these questions — and over the exact words used on ballots and explanatory materials. Earlier this week, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled a decision upheld to keep an abortion rights initiative off the November state ballot, agreeing with election officials that the group behind the measure had failed to file proper documentation about the signature gatherers they had hired.
Voters in all seven states that have had abortion issues on their ballots since 2022 have sided with abortion rights advocates.