Charlie Riedel/AP Photo
People at a election night watch party react after an abortion rights amendment to the Missouri Constitution passed, November 5, 2024, in Kansas City, Missouri.
Missourians voted to enshrine abortion into the state’s constitution, but the fight over reproductive rights continues. The victory was narrow, by around three percentage points. That result immediately produced a lawsuit to move statutes that conflict with the newly approved amendment off the books. But Republican lawmakers in this GOP trifecta state are embarking on a poorly thought-out exercise that may put them on a crash course with reversing the will of their people.
Before the November vote, Missouri banned abortion except in cases of a woman’s medical emergency. On Wednesday, a Missouri state court held a hearing on a Planned Parenthood Great Plains and Planned Parenthood Great Rivers lawsuit that would override that law, and pave the way for health care providers to begin to offer abortion procedures. The lawsuit would also invalidate other statutes that range from conflicting gestational bans at 8 weeks, 14 weeks, and 18 weeks, to TRAP (targeted regulation of abortion providers) laws that hinder women from seeking an abortion with legal devices like mandatory waiting periods, counseling, and hospital admissions privilege requirements. The amendment goes into effect on Thursday.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey offered up how he planned to proceed in the post-election period in a “opinion letter” to Gov.-elect Mike Kehoe, the current lieutenant governor. Bailey opened with an attack on the amendment’s small margin of victory, an appeals court decision that compelled the judges to rewrite the amendment in neutral terms, and the millions (nearly $30.6 million to be exact, to the opponents’ $1.9 million) spent by the initiative’s “out-of-state” supporters. Bailey also suggested that another amendment might just find its way back to the ballot for the people to reconsider.
For now, the attorney general indicated that he would concentrate on enforcing laws where the state retains authority: restricting abortions after fetal viability (with certain exceptions), enforcing parental consent for minor children, and prohibiting abortion in cases where a person might be pressured or coerced into the procedure.
By most accounts, Bailey is a man in a hurry to make his mark in national political circles, and a second go-round on high-priority issues for Missouri conservatives is one way to raise that profile. Although re-elected in November, the attorney general has been actively pursuing a ticket out of Jefferson City. He’s been twice eliminated from consideration for two Trump administration posts, attorney general and FBI director. Those plum executive positions seem to be off the table for now, along with—over the longer term—the governor’s office and the two Senate seats. (Sen. Josh Hawley won re-election in November, and Sen. Eric Schmitt prevailed in 2022; both are former AGs.)
Well before the results of the initiative were in, GOP lawmakers had already declared their intentions to try to add new restrictions or erase the amendment.
That the attorney general operates in a comfortably Republican environment might appear to give him certain advantages, especially if he obtains his request in the Planned Parenthood case for a change of venue from Jackson County (Kansas City) to a more hospitable Cole County (Jefferson City) court, which has ruled in the state’s favor on an abortion issue before. But Peverill Squire, a University of Missouri political science professor, offers this caution: “The judges have both at the district level and the appellate level been relatively independent, so there are no guarantees for the attorney general that the courts will give him the answers that he would prefer.”
Well before the results of the initiative were in, GOP lawmakers had already declared their intentions to try to add new restrictions or erase the amendment; they have already prepared nearly a dozen bills to that end.
Some lawmakers see the close result as a signal that they might find success with a follow-up measure. Bringing another measure to the ballot so soon is no sure thing. A midterm battle would not attract the high presidential-year turnout (67 percent) that contributed to the close vote. Plus, Republicans have tried to go after the ballot initiative process itself, and failed.
And while conservative Republicans may dominate the legislature, the Missouri fault lines do mirror national ones on abortion. Some lawmakers favor the most draconian no-exceptions bans; others prefer 12- to 16-week bans with exceptions for health of the mother; still others want exceptions for rape and incest or just rape—with a police report. Then, Squire notes, whatever changes they come up with will have to be defended before voters.
Missouri’s abortion conundrum has produced an already contentious leadership battle for Speaker of the Missouri House. The presumptive Speaker, current Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, who represents a Kansas City suburb, had all but cemented his view on the amendment after the election, stating that the “people had spoken,” the vote was the “will of the land,” and “want[ing] compromise.” That was all fine, until a fervent anti-abortion lawmaker well to his right, Republican Rep. Justin Sparks of Wildwood, a St. Louis suburb, challenged him, citing the vote’s narrow margin. He has offered up a “personhood” proposal. That move sent Patterson into waffle mode, where he spun out talking points about possible curbs.
With the Trump administration poised to make deep cuts in the federal budget, Missouri Republicans may have their hands full trying to figure out how they, along with the 49 other states, intend to survive possible massive cuts in federal aid and the reverberations from potential tariff regimes.
Certainly, Kehoe, a veteran state politician and businessman who got his start in car sales, and his fellow business-focused Republicans may want to keep a majority of Republican legislators satisfied on abortion and reproductive rights matters—especially if the courts deliver favorable rulings on Amendment 3 and the state finds itself at risk with broader regional and national economic crises.
Says Squires, “I want to see how much time and attention it gets in either house of the General Assembly, whether the House Republicans really want to spend time on this or not, and they may early in the session, but it could easily get squeezed by other things as the session moves towards the end.” He adds, “The state Senate actually allows for filibusters of a sort. If it gets pursued in that chamber, I’m sure the Democrats will do their tag team effort to squeeze it out as long as they can.”
Missouri Republicans are also dissatisfied that a $15 minimum wage and sick leave (with exceptions) passed. “It actually passed by a wider margin than the abortion measure did, so they’re sort of raising more questions again about the extent to which they’re willing to accept the decisions the voters have made,” Squires says, adding, “That makes some of the Republicans uncomfortable, and it certainly gives the Democrats an opportunity to protest it.”
So far, Republicans have hewed closely to protests on specific ballot measures rather than an all-out assault on curbing voters’ direct-democracy powers. State lawmakers may tip their hands in the coming weeks and show Missourians whether they believe voters should share the heavy lifting of governance or if they alone should be the deciders.
