Missouri lawmakers are going after voter-approved abortion rights. Voters will likely reelect them
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Voters in Missouri last election approved a constitutional amendment that promised to undo the state's near-total abortion ban. The same day, they reelected a Republican supermajority to the state Legislature, including several of the same lawmakers who passed the abortion ban in 2019.
Now, GOP lawmakers are working to roll back some, if not all, of the abortion rights protected under the new amendment.
“Time and time again, the supermajority will spend taxpayer money on trying to undo the will of the voters,” said Missouri Democratic Rep. Emily Weber, who has been filing abortion-rights legislation for the past four years.
Some Republicans have said enacting restrictions under the measure still adheres to voters' wishes.
“I haven’t heard anyone seriously discuss taking away the rape and incest exception,” Republican House Speaker Jonathan Patterson said. “To regulate it as the amendment asks us to do, I think it’s an appropriate thing to do.”
Any changes to directly undo the amendment passed by voters would need to go back on the ballot, he said.
Republicans likely won’t face any pushback at the polls for once again going after abortion and could benefit politically in conservative states like Missouri, experts said.
Lawmakers from rural GOP strongholds have backing from their constituents to pursue such legislation and also face pressure to take a strong stand against abortion in order to survive primaries, said Mary Ziegler, a historian at the University of California, Davis, School of Law who studies abortion.
“If you are a legislator from a conservative district in Missouri, you feel absolutely no threat from Democrats and you feel a considerable threat potentially from your right if you aren’t conservative enough on abortion,” Ziegler said.
The seemingly contradictory dynamic between the abortion policies voters support and the candidates they elect is not unique to Missouri.
Ohio voters added a right to abortion to their state’s constitution in November 2023, overriding a ban on abortions after cardiac activity is detected, about six weeks into pregnancy and before many women know they’re pregnant.
Abortion rights advocates sued to have the ban invalidated, and the state’s Republican attorney general pushed back, seeking to keep elements of the 2019 law, including a parental notification provision and a requirement that people seeking an abortion make two in-person visits to their provider, wait 24 hours for the procedure and have their abortion recorded and reported.
It took until October 2024 for a court to strike down the ban, though enforcement had previously been on hold.
In Arizona, where voters also approved a right to abortion in 2024, health care providers have asked a court to strike down a previous ban on abortion after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, with limited exceptions. There, Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, has filed court papers saying she won’t enforce the old ban until after the lawsuit to invalidate it is resolved.
Proposed laws in Missouri would outlaw abortion completely, only allow it in cases of medical emergencies, ban most abortions once cardiac activity is detected or ban it after fetal viability.
Republicans say there is room to act without violating the abortion-rights amendment, which allows lawmakers to enact restrictions after viability except when necessary to “protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant person.” Patterson and others see a need for legislation that would define terms in the amendment, such as viability.
Viability is a term used by health care providers to describe whether a pregnancy is expected to continue developing normally or whether a fetus might survive outside the uterus. Though there’s no defined time frame, doctors say it is sometime after the 21st week of pregnancy.
Republican state Rep. Brian Seitz said the “political reality” is that most Missouri voters likely would not vote for an amendment in line with his belief that life begins at conception. But Seitz also said he thinks many voters approved last year's ballot measure because it was the only way to allow abortion access for cases of rape, incest and medical emergencies. And he said there is support among voters for some restrictions beyond that.
“We can chip away at Amendment 3,” Seitz said. “I don’t think repeal is what’s going to happen in the short term.”
A total repeal would need voter approval.
University of Central Missouri political scientist Robynn Kuhlmann said a lack of competition between Democrats and Republicans insulates lawmakers from backlash at the polls.
In Missouri, Kuhlmann estimated that roughly 95% of House seats were won by at least a 5% margin in 2024.
And for more and more voters, she said “party seems to be taking precedence regardless of what actions have been occurring in the legislative arena.”
“What may only matter at that point in time for the voter is whether or not there’s an R or a D behind the candidates' names,” Kuhlmann said.
Missouri's abortion-rights amendment passed by a narrow margin — with close to 51% of the vote. Most support came from Kansas City, St. Louis, the college town of Columbia and surrounding areas.
But counties throughout the rest of the state, particularly in rural areas, voted against the measure.
Seitz, who is from the southwestern Missouri tourist destination of Branson, said people from his district, as well as his conscience, “declares that I should be doing something as an elected representative to promote life.”
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Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill contributed to this report from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
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