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Three months after Missouri voters have made reproductive rights critical to the state’s constitution, abortion remains unavailable as the state’s leading providers fight legal hurdles providing procedures.
At the same time, abortion opponents in the state legislature, stabbed by the passage of the November Amendment 3, have introduced bills aimed at blocking implementation of measures or raising targets. Return of abortion services.
This week, state lawmakers held a hearing on a conservative plan to make new amendments to most abortion-blocking votes. If passed at the general meeting, the measure could go to voters immediately this year.
The proposed amendment requires abortion unless there is an abnormality in the fetus, or rape or incest, rape or incest, and the case of rape or incest, and the condition is subject to a 12-week limit. Prohibit. It also prohibits public funds for abortion. Additionally, it prohibits the provision of surgeries, hormones, or drugs to assist in gender transition. This is a procedure already illegal in Missouri.
At a hearing on the proposed amendment before the House Children and Families Committee on Tuesday, its sponsor, Rep. Melanie Stinnett, a Republican from Springfield, said she was trying to destroy people’s will. I admitted that I might say that. But Stinnett said he had heard concerns about the Third Amendment language and was an attempt to clarify the state’s abortion laws.
Stinnett said voters may not have understood what they were voting for.
Some members of the committee pushed back.
“Did you know what you were voting when you voted for?” asked State Sen. Marlene Terry, a Democrat outside St. Louis.
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In an interview, Congressman Brian Seitz, a Republican from Branson, said in a question of delays in providing abortion access after the election, was “a very positive event,” giving conservative legislators time to strategize. He said. He said it gave his party time to “cut down certain aspects of the revision.”
Missouri is the US Supreme Court Roev. Long before he excluded federal rights to abortion by hitting Wade, he had severely restricted abortion access. The state has passed the Trigger Act, which bans abortion entirely in the event of a medical emergency, unless there is no exemption from rape or incest, if the ROE drops. The ban came into effect in 2022.
Planned Parenthood stopped performing abortions in Missouri at the time, and many people traveled to nearby states to access abortions. According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2023, around 2,850 Missouri people won abortions in Kansas, and around 8,750 people sought procedures in Illinois.
In response, a massive campaign gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures and placed the right to abortion on the ballot. Modification 3 – Established a fundamental right to reproductive freedom, including making decisions about prenatal care, birth, postnatal care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birth conditions – 51.6% to 48.4% margin of.
This amendment guarantees the right to abortion up to fetal survival. Fetal survival was defined in the judgement of the treatment physician as the stage in which the fetus could survive outside the uterus without extraordinary medical attention. The amendment allowed state legislatures to regulate abortions after survival rates, but required regulations that did not interfere with the abortions needed to protect the lives and health of pregnant people.
After the amendment came into effect in December, Planned Parenthood said it was ready to offer abortions at three locations across the state, but due to Missouri’s ban and other regulations targeting abortion providers. I felt it was restricted. . That appealed.
In December, a Kansas City state court judge temporarily blocked the ban and most rules, including a mandatory 72-hour waiting period and a ban based on your gestational age. The final result will be decided at a trial, which is scheduled to begin in January 2026.
The state court’s ruling enforced several abortion restrictions. These include strict structural requirements for clinics such as specific corridors, rooms and door dimensions, and the mandate of providers to conduct invasive pelvic testing before prescribing abortion medications.
Advocates of abortion rights argue that these regulations are medically unnecessary and create barriers to care. At last week’s hearing in Kansas City, Planned Parenthood’s lawyer asked the judge to reconsider, highlighting that the restrictions would make it impossible for clinics to resume full-service provisions. .
The Planned Parenthood lawyers argue that “this extreme restriction of abortion access is unthinkable” because of the licensing requirement that abortion access was limited to one location in St. Louis in the last year of ROE. I did. I voted for the revision.
State Attorney General Josh Devine argued that parent-child relationships for planned parents could have requested a regulation exemption rather than challenged them in court. He noted that the state has previously granted such exemptions, but planned parent-child relationships have not filed a request. The judge gave both sides until the end of this week to provide further explanations before her sentence.
The delay had another effect. It is the fuel supply sector among abortion rights advocates. Some of them opposed Amendment 3, claiming it had not progressed well, and that it gave the nation too much power to regulate abortion. They also point out that the amendment guarantees abortion rights before fetal survival, but then imposes restrictions and cements the state’s authority to give a foothold to the enemy in abortion. (Proponents say they settled on language as a compromise they believed would appeal to more voters, and the amendments that provided unlimited access to abortion were unsuccessful.)
A Planned Parenthood representative did not respond to requests for comment.
Efforts to link abortion to transgender rights reflect a previous campaign where abortion opponents intentionally confuse two issues: signboards and radio ads. Critics said the strategy was distracting – an attempt to shift focus from abortion rights by strengthening the rights to abortion.
Jameel Fields Oldsbrook, a professor at St. Louis University Law School and a former policy analyst for the American Federation of Planned Parenthood, saw Republicans take a two-sided approach to Missouri’s abortion corrections. I am. Once President Donald Trump comes to power, she hopes to drive familiar strategies, such as cutting off Medicaid and cutting Title X funding for clinics offering abortions.
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She said she expected Republicans to attack abortion rights in “deprecating and maneuvering ways,” including redefine fetal survival rates and promoting fetal personality laws.
However, she said she was surprised by the efforts of the Republicans simply to gut the revision 3.
“It seems politically naive to try and move forward exactly the same thing that voters rejected,” she said. “They don’t believe that voters are already speaking out loud and clear, or they don’t think they are smart enough to recognize what they are trying to do.
