Affordability and war may be top of mind for many voters, but the fight for abortion rights still rages. In November, Virginia, Idaho, and Nevada will weigh in on ballot initiatives to protect abortion access. Virginia’s proposed constitutional amendment would enshrine a “right to reproductive freedom,” allowing women to make their own choices about their pregnancy barring a “compelling state interest.”
Nevada voters approved the Right to Abortion Initiative in 2024, but constitutional amendments must be approved in two even-numbered election years, so voters must approve the question again. Idaho currently has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans, but the Idaho Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act Initiative would remove that ban and enable individuals to make their own choices about childbirth care, contraception, fertility treatment, miscarriage care, and other supports throughout pregnancy.
Two states have tried and failed to curb existing protections. In Montana, far-right legislators hoped to put an amendment on the ballot that would redefine “personhood” in an attempt to subvert the abortion protections approved by voters in 2024. However, that effort fell short last year. Conservative Colorado legislators hoped to repeal the constitutional right to abortion that voters approved in 2024, but the proponents of the 2026 constitutional initiative did not collect the 124,238 signatures required by the August 3 deadline.
That leaves Missouri with the midterms’ biggest abortion battle. After the Dobbs decision in 2022, Missouri was the first state in the country to implement a near-total ban on abortion. But two years later, voters approved a new slate of reproductive protections. Yet with abortions increasing due to a number of factors, including the availability of medication and telehealth abortion, this time around anti-abortion advocates and Republican lawmakers are using novel tactics to coax voters into overturning the 2024 constitutional amendment.
After the Dobbs decision in 2022, Missouri was the first state in the country to implement a near-total ban on abortion.
Missouri Amendment 3 would effectively bring back a near-total ban, with very few exceptions before 12 weeks. “When we’ve talked to Missourians across the state about why they’re voting no [on Amendment 3], it’s really clear that Missourians are confused and frustrated,” Tori Schafer, the ACLU of Missouri’s director of policy and campaigns, told the Prospect. “The question we get a lot is, ‘Why do we need to vote on this again?’ And the answer is, politicians are trying to undo your vote and want to ban abortion in Missouri,” she says.
Missouri legislators are even using the title of the amendment to confuse voters. In 2024, pro-choice Missourians had to vote “Yes on 3” to approve the ballot initiative. On November 3, they must vote “No on 3” to protect abortion access, plus health care services including prenatal care, postpartum care, birth control, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions, all of which were protected by the original Amendment 3.
But in addition to banning abortion, Amendment 3 proposes to prohibit gender transition surgeries as well as hormones and hormone blockers for individuals under the age of 18, unless these medications are “unrelated to the purpose of a gender transition.” But the catch is these services are already illegal in Missouri under a 2023 law, and a state supreme court decision upheld that law in January.
“It’s very clear that what politicians are trying to do with this is to trick voters [into] voting against something they just passed. [But] we’re confident that Missourians will see through the deceptive trick because it’s so clearly and obviously trying to overturn their votes and ban abortion in [nearly all] cases,” says Schafer. “Politicians banned health care for transgender youth in Missouri three years ago now, and that ban will remain in effect after this election, no matter how voters vote on this amendment.”
The Missouri Constitution states that a proposed amendment “shall not contain more than one subject and matters properly connected therewith,” a provision intended to prevent state lawmakers from playing politics by attaching other issues to a proposed measure. Last year, however, a state appeals court decided that the amendment did not violate the single-subject rule because both abortion and gender-affirming care are “closely related to the single subject of reproductive healthcare.”
“This [amendment] is ridiculous,” says Steven Greene, a professor of political science at North Carolina State University. “You can’t just take two totally different things and put them in one amendment and say, ‘Here’s an amendment to say you have to be 18 to drive. Oh, and also that we’re going to change how we elect state senators.’” He views the initiative “as an effort to undermine abortion protections by tying it to the very unpopular position [in Missouri] of allowing transgender health care for minors.”
“You see ballot initiatives all the time that won’t change anything, where there’s already something against the law,” Greene notes, “because ballot initiatives are regularly used in a purely political rather than policy sense—they’re not looking to actually change a policy—they are looking to activate certain groups of voters and hopefully get them to participate more in the election.”
This is not the first time that Missouri legislators have blatantly ignored the will of the voters. In 2024, Missourians also approved Proposition A, which established one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked and increased the minimum wage to $13.75 by 2025. However, the Missouri legislature passed a bill repealing those sick leave provisions.
Missouri’s anti-abortion fight is out of sync with voters’ sentiments. In their book Not Going Back: Public Opinion on Abortion in Post-Dobbs America, political scientists Laurel Elder, Steven Greene, and Mary-Kate Lizotte explain that Americans’ views have shifted drastically since the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to an abortion. People who once held moderate views on the issue now increasingly support abortion for any reason—from medical emergencies to unwanted pregnancies. Even more strikingly, many Republicans now support the procedure.
“Missourians are sick and tired of politicians in Jefferson City ignoring the will of the people,” says Schafer of the ACLU of Missouri. “That’s what we’re going to see, frankly, in midterms across the country—folks rejecting politicians that continue to ignore what voters want and frankly deserve, especially when it comes to health care access.”
