Missouri Voters Reject Amendment 3, Preserving Abortion Rights, Approved in 2024 • Missouri Independent

Two years after becoming the first state to overturn an abortion ban at the ballot box, Missouri voters on Tuesday rejected an attempt to reinstate the ban, instead preserving the reproductive rights protections they approved in 2024.

The defeat of Amendment 3, which received just 44 percent of the vote, leaves in place a constitutional right to abortion until fetal viability and rejects efforts by Republican lawmakers to overturn the narrow abortion rights victory two years ago.

“Politicians thought they knew better than voters,” said Dr. Margaret Baum, chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, as she stood before a few hundred abortion rights supporters Tuesday night in St. Louis. “They thought we weren’t smart enough to know what we voted for in 2024. They thought they could get voters to vote in 2026. But we’re not new to this fight, so we’ve seen their dirty tricks coming, and more importantly, we know our values.”

The proposed amendment would have banned almost all elective abortions, except for medical emergencies, fetal abnormalities and pregnancies resulting from rape or incest if an abortion was requested within the first 12 weeks.

It also would have constitutionally banned gender-affirming care for minors.

Instead, Missouri became the first state to reject an attempt to overturn an abortion rights measure and the first state to reject an attempt to constitutionally ban gender-affirming care for minors.

“We didn’t ask for this,” Mallory Schwarz, executive director of Abortion Action Missouri, said after the race was called. “And yet, for 18 months, we have fought harder than ever to protect our fundamental rights to our own bodies, to our lives and to our future. »

The result is a setback for Missouri’s anti-abortion movement, which spent two years rebuilding its campaign after narrowly losing the 2024 vote.

“We didn’t succeed today, but it’s a battle within a war, and so we’re definitely going to continue forever,” Tom Estes, of Her Health, Her Future, the campaign behind Amendment 3, told reporters in Colombia after the final results were announced. “We will never stop until every child is protected in the state of Missouri.”

Estes said he was proud of the statewide coalition. This time, unlike in 2024, efforts to reinstate the abortion ban have had significant, organized support from Republican lawmakers, Gov. Mike Kehoe’s office and several of the state’s largest churches.

Kehoe, who campaigned across Missouri for Amendment 3 on Monday, told supporters during a stop in Chesterfield that his defeat would be “a sad day for Missouri.”

The proposal also faced opposition from some anti-abortion activists who argued the exceptions went too far.

Among them was Republican Senator Mike Moon, who publicly criticized the amendment because it allows abortion in cases of rape, incest and medical emergencies.

The campaign to pass Amendment 3 also focused heavily on gender-affirming care for minors, which has been restricted by state law since 2023.

The legal ban on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones is set to expire in 2027, while the ban on gender-affirming surgeries for minors is permanent. Both remain in place.

Supporters argued that a constitutional ban was necessary to make these restrictions permanent. Opponents said the proposal was intended to attract voters who favor restrictions on gender-affirming care but who might otherwise oppose an abortion ban.

Shira Berkowitz, senior director of public policy and advocacy at PROMO, a Missouri-based LGBTQ+ advocacy group that is also part of the Stop the Ban coalition, said Amendment 3 seeks to vilify and dehumanize trans children.

Instead, they said, Missourians sent a different message to trans youth: “You belong here in Missouri. »

National anti-abortion leaders had pointed to the Missouri amendment as a possible model for restoring abortion bans in other states by pairing abortion restrictions with bans on gender-affirming care for minors.

“What’s happening in Missouri, right here, this year in this election, is not going to stay just in Missouri,” David Bereit, executive director of the Virginia-based Life Leadership Conference, said during a virtual fundraising event in October. “When Missouri wins, every other state will learn that these bad amendments can be overturned and overturned. But if it loses, no other state will try this again for a long time, perhaps for a generation.”

Missouri has been at the center of legal and legislative battles over abortion in recent years.

Missouri was the first state to enact a law banning nearly all abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Thousands of Missouri women then went to clinics in Illinois and Kansas to get abortions. Others ended their pregnancies using medications obtained through telehealth providers in states where abortion remained legal.

In 2024, 51.6% of Missouri voters approved a citizen measure on reproductive rights led by organizations including the ACLU of Missouri, Abortion Action Missouri and local Planned Parenthood affiliates.

After its passage, access to abortion slowly returned to Missouri. Five of the state’s Planned Parenthood clinics have resumed offering the procedure amid ongoing litigation over dozens of abortion restrictions that were later ruled unconstitutional under the Reproductive Rights Amendment.

The campaign for Amendment 3, Her Health, Her Future, raised more than $7 million, but was far outpaced by abortion rights advocates.

Before Election Day, Stop the Ban had raised more than $27 million.

The abortion rights campaign attracted small donations from thousands of Missourians, but much of its financial support came from wealthy out-of-state donors and progressive nonprofits that are not required to disclose their donors.

Among them was the Fairness Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit and the campaign’s largest contributor.

Steph Quinn of The Independent contributed to this report.

This story was updated at 12:35 a.m. to include comments from both campaigns.