Judge considers bumping abortion-rights measure off Missouri ballot

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri judge faces a Tuesday deadline to decide whether to take the rare step of pulling an abortion-rights amendment off the state’s November ballot.

Lawyers for abortion opponents during a Friday bench trial asked Cole County Associate Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh to strip the measure from the ballot.

He faces a tight deadline to rule because Tuesday is the deadline to make changes to Missouri ballots, and an appeal is likely.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Mary Catherine Martin on Friday argued that the campaign to restore abortion rights in Missouri drafted an amendment that is intentionally broad in order to trick voters into supporting it.

“They have not treated the voters with the respect that the Constitution requires,” Martin told reporters after the trial.

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the abortion-rights campaign, said the lawsuit is an attempt to block voters from enacting the amendment at the polls.

“Out-of-touch politicians and the special interest groups who hold influence over them are making a last-ditch effort to prevent Missourians from exercising their constitutional right to direct democracy,” lawyer Tori Schafer said.

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At least nine other states will consider constitutional amendments enshrining abortion rights this fall — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota. Most would guarantee a right to abortion until fetal viability and allow it later for the health of the pregnant woman, which is what the Missouri proposal would do.

New York also has a ballot measure that proponents say would protect abortion rights, though there’s a dispute about its impact.

Voters in all seven states that have had abortion questions on their ballots since 2022 have sided with abortion-rights supporters.

Martin said, if adopted, the Missouri measure could undo the state’s bans on human cloning, genital mutilation and gender-affirming surgeries for children. She said at least some voters would not have signed the petition to put the amendment on the ballot if they had known about all the laws that could be repealed.

“Why would you hide that you are going to open the frontier of reproductive health care in Missouri if you have the confidence that people are still going to sign the petition?” Martin said.

Loretta Haggard, another lawyer for the abortion-rights campaign, said assuming that the measure would repeal bans on cloning and genital mutilation — which are not mentioned in the amendment — is “extreme speculation.”

Haggard said it will be up to future judges to decide which abortion laws are thrown out if the amendment is adopted. She pointed to provisions in the measure that allow restrictions on abortion after fetal viability, for example.

The term is used by health care providers to describe whether a pregnancy is expected to continue developing normally or whether a fetus might survive outside the uterus. It is generally considered to be around 23 or 24 weeks into pregnancy but has shifted earlier with medical advances.

Missouri banned most abortions immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. There is an exception for medical emergencies, but almost no abortions have occurred at Missouri facilities since then.

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Missouri’s ACLU branch, local Planned Parenthoods and a group called Abortion Action in Missouri launched a campaign to legalize abortion in response to the ban. Although women who receive abortions are protected from criminal liability in Missouri, anyone who performs an abortion outside the state’s limited exceptions faces felony charges.

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom’s proposed amendment would guarantee an individual’s right to get an abortion and make other reproductive health decisions.

Limbaugh said he plans to rule on the case as soon as possible.