Missourians voted to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. The move would reverse the state’s near-total ban on abortions.
Update: Donald Trump projected to win 2024 presidential election: DDHQ
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.
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.
