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A month after Missouri voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to abortion, Republican lawmakers in the red state are already working to overturn it or at least weaken it.
One bill would ask voters to amend the state constitution to define life as beginning at conception and declare that unborn children are human beings with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
As a result, abortion would be classified as unlawful murder.
Another proposal aimed at repealing the Abortion Rights Amendment would link the two issues, even though the amendment already makes gender surgery and gender-affirming care for transgender children illegal. It asks voters to ban gender transition procedures for minors. In Missouri.
Other amendments include stricter abortion restrictions, including restricting access to cases of rape, incest, medical emergencies and fetal abnormalities. These measures would impose additional requirements, such as requiring rape victims to file a police report in order to obtain an abortion.
Republican lawmakers have introduced a voter-led measure to raise the bar for amending the state constitution, potentially making it harder to pass similar legislation in the future.
The legislative action follows the Nov. 5 election in which an amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution won by a landslide 51.6% to 48.4%. From Thursday, the constitution will guarantee the right to abortion until the fetus is viable, but restrictions on post-viability abortions will remain in place.
In other states where voters approved abortion rights bills last month, there is no indication yet that lawmakers will seek to challenge those bills.
Even before votes were counted in Missouri, supporters of the Third Amendment, as the bill was called, expected a victory for their efforts to somehow infringe on abortion rights.
“These people will continue to oppose abortion,” said state Rep. Deb Lavender, a Democrat from suburban St. Louis.
Missouri already has a law that recognizes the beginning of life at conception and states that a fetus has a “protectable interest in life, health, and well-being,” but the proposed constitutional amendment goes even further. It would effectively elevate the principle to state constitutions, potentially complicating not only abortion rights but also the legality of in vitro fertilization and embryo handling.
Several states have laws recognizing the personhood of unborn children, but Missouri is the second state after Alabama to enshrine it in its constitution. That could lead to legal and ideological confusion and even conflict, experts say.
“Voters may not understand that you can’t have both at the same time say, ‘I support abortion rights,’ and ‘life begins at conception,'” Jamil Fields said.・Allsbrook said. Professor at Saint Louis University School of Law and former policy analyst at Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Rep. Justin Sparks, a Republican from suburban St. Louis who authored one of the personality bills, said he was encouraged by the close vote on abortion rights.
“A clear mission has not been achieved,” he said. The amendment had strong support in the St. Louis metropolitan area, Kansas City, and the county where the University of Missouri is located, but “the vast majority of the rest of the state voted the other way,” he added. “So I think it’s only fair to bring this issue up again.”
But state Sen. Tracy McCreary, a Democrat from the St. Louis suburbs, said Sparks was going against the will of St. Louis-area voters. “I think it’s even more disrespectful to voters,” she said. “It wasn’t just voters who tended to vote Democratic who voted for the Third Amendment; it also included Republican voters and independent voters, but that’s getting lost in this debate. I think there is.”
The measure, which links abortion and transgender rights, reflects a pre-election campaign in which abortion opponents conflated these topics. Critics said the strategy was an attempt to exploit voters’ discomfort with transgender issues to distract from abortion rights, which had strong support among voters.
While Republican lawmakers push these measures, the legal landscape surrounding abortion in Missouri is already changing. On Wednesday, Jackson County Circuit Court heard arguments in a lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri seeking to overturn Missouri’s near-total abortion ban and other laws regulating abortion. This lawsuit followed the passage of the Third Amendment. Planned Parenthood organizations said they plan to resume abortion services in St. Louis, Kansas City and Columbia on Friday if they prevail in court.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey acknowledged that the amendment would legalize most abortions if it took effect, but would prohibit abortions after the fetus is viable, impose a 72-hour waiting period, and He said he would enforce remaining restrictions, including parental consent. For minors.
Lawmakers are also trying to raise the bar for passing constitutional amendments. Now, a simple majority is enough. That allowed Missouri voters to bypass Congress and pass a progressive amendment that lawmakers opposed. The new bill would require voters to pass a constitutional amendment that would require a majority of voters in five of the state’s eight congressional districts, as well as a majority of the entire state. Critics argue that it would give disproportionate power to localities over the majority of voters. That would make it harder for voters to approve policies that don’t align with the priorities of the conservative politicians they tend to elect.
Earlier this year, a similar effort to make it harder to amend the constitution failed due to a Senate Democratic filibuster.
Sparks criticized the General Assembly’s Republican leadership for allowing it to fail, noting that it could have passed with Republican supermajorities in both chambers.
“We hold all the power,” Sparks said. “We hold all the procedural levers of power and can stop debate in both chambers at any time on any bill we choose.”
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Florida shows how higher standards for voter engagement could play out. In 2006, the state raised the constitutional amendment threshold to 60%. This year, a majority of voters (57%) supported the Abortion Rights Amendment, an even bigger margin than in Missouri, but not enough in Florida.
However, it is not yet clear whether either measure has enough support in the Missouri General Assembly.
Lavender said that during the election, supporters of abortion rights significantly outnumbered opponents. “This is going to be difficult to reverse,” she said. “The same money that supported it will now be working against you.”
