By DAVID A. LIEB
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri voters will decide in November whether to guarantee a right to abortion with a constitutional amendment that would reverse the state’s near-total ban on the procedure.
The secretary of state’s office certified Tuesday that an initiative petition received more than enough signatures from registered voters to qualify for the general election. It will need approval from a majority of voters to become enshrined in the state constitution.
Missouri will join at least a half-dozen states voting on abortion rights during the presidential election. Arizona’s secretary of state certified an abortion-rights measure for the ballot on Monday. Measures also will go before voters in Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Nevada and South Dakota. While not explicitly addressing abortion rights, a New York ballot measure would bar discrimination based on “pregnancy outcomes” and “reproductive healthcare,” among other things.
Initiative supporters had expressed confidence the measure will make the Missouri ballot after submitting more than double the necessary number of signatures.
Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft said there also were sufficient signatures to hold November elections on initiatives raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour and legalizing sports betting. But he said an initiative authorizing a casino at the popular Lake of the Ozarks tourist destination fell short of the required threshold.
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned a nationwide right to abortion in 2022, sparking a state-by-state battle in legislatures and a new push to let voters decide the issue. Since the ruling, most Republican-controlled states have new abortion restrictions in effect while most Democratic-led states have measures protecting abortion access.
Abortion rights supporters have prevailed in all seven states that already had decided ballot measures since 2022: California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio and Vermont.
The high court’s decision overturning its Roe v. Wade precedent triggered a 2019 Missouri law to take effect prohibiting abortion “except in cases of medical emergency.” That law makes it a felony punishable by 5 to 15 years in prison to perform or induce an abortion, though a woman undergoing an abortion cannot be prosecuted.
Since then, almost no abortions have occurred at Missouri facilities. But that doesn’t mean Missouri residents aren’t having abortions. They could receive abortion pills from out of state or travel to clinics elsewhere, including ones just across the border in Illinois and Kansas.
The Missouri ballot measure would create a right to abortion until a fetus could likely survive outside the womb without extraordinary medical measures. Fetal viability generally has been considered to be around 23 or 24 weeks into pregnancy but has shifted downward with medical advances. The ballot measure would allow abortions after fetal viability if a health care professional determines it’s necessary to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant woman.
The number of states considering abortion ballot measures could grow. Officials in Montana and Nebraska have yet to determine whether proposed abortion-rights initiatives qualified for a November vote. Nebraska officials also are evaluating a competing constitutional amendment that would enshrine the state’s current ban on most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy.
