Missouri approves amendment to protect abortion rights, overturning near-total ban

Missourians voted to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. The move would reverse the state’s near-total ban on abortions.

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According to the Missouri Secretary of State, the proposed measure does the following:

• The right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion and contraceptives, with any governmental interference of that right presumed invalid, becomes guaranteed through the constitution.
• It removes Missouri’s ban on abortion.
• The amendment allows regulation of reproductive health care to improve or maintain the health of the patient.
• The proposal requires the government not to discriminate, in government programs, funding, and other activities, against persons providing or obtaining reproductive health care
• Abortion will still be restricted or banned after fetal viability except to protect the life or health of the woman.

Missouri’s current law only allows abortions in the event of a medical emergency and makes no exceptions for rape or incest.

Missouri is one of 10 states voting on abortion-related measures. It was the first state to overturn an abortion ban and confirm abortion protections. Florida rejected an amendment to protect abortion, keeping the six-week ban in place. New York, Colorado and Maryland, states that already had abortion protections, voted for constitutional amendments protecting reproductive care.

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Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs vs. Jackson decision in 2022, which overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion has become a significant issue on state ballots. Missouri’s ban was the first trigger law enacted after the decision.

Abortion rights groups significantly outspent their opponents in these campaigns, raising more than $160 million. That total is nearly six times what anti-abortion groups raised. In Florida alone, proponents of the abortion rights measure raised over $75 million.

Advocates prevailed on all seven ballot measures that have gone before voters since the Dobbs decision, with many states aiming to enshrine the right to abortion in their state constitutions.