Missouri abortion-rights campaign fundraising total at $22M one month before election

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A campaign to restoring access to abortion in Missouri has raised nearly $22 million to date, according to financial reports filed Tuesday.

The campaign reported that the campaign raised more than $14 million between July and the end of September alone.

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom is seeking to overturn the state’s near-total abortion ban and is one of nine statewide campaigns to enshrine abortion rights in state constitutions.

The campaign had nearly $11 million in the bank at the start of the month, which it could spend on advertising in the final weeks before the Nov. 5 election.

Donors to the Missouri campaign include model Karlie Kloss, who donated $50,000, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who donated $1 million last month. Other major funders include Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, Sixteen Thirty Fund and The Fairness Project.

A political action committee in Missouri opposing the abortion rights amendment has raised about $212,000 and had less than $5,000 left as of early October. The political action committee of the powerful anti-abortion group Missouri Right to Life has spent at least $637,000 so far opposing the amendment.

Initiative petition campaigns often cost a lot of money in Missouri, and abortion ballot measures in other states have been enormously expensive.

A fight in 2022 for protection abortion rights in ohio cost a combined $70 million, with abortion rights supporters bringing in nearly $40 million and opponents more than $30 million. The reproductive rights amendment passed with nearly 57% of the vote in Ohio.

This year, abortion rights groups have done just that outplayed opponents by a nearly 8-to-1 margin in U.S. ballot measure campaigns