Missouri voters approve Amendment 3, overturn state’s abortion ban

By Anna Spoerre

Missouri Independent

ST. LOUIS — When Missouri on Tuesday became the first state to overturn a near-total abortion ban by the vote of the people, Desiree White cried happy tears.

Twenty-five years earlier, she and her husband chose to terminate a pregnancy they very much wanted after they received a diagnosis of a fatal fetal abnormality.

(Photo- Maggie Olivia, a senior policy manager with Abortion Action Missouri, embraces abortion-rights supporters after the race is called in favor of Amendment 3 on Tuesday in St. Louis- Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

White, a retired professor of clinical psychology at Washington University who is now 66, was among a few hundred people who embraced, cried and cheered as the results were announced just before 10:30 p.m. at an Amendment 3 watch party in downtown St. Louis.

 

With all precincts reporting, Amendment 3 won 52% to 48%.

“We did not accept this nightmare thrust upon us,” Tori Schafer, deputy director for policy and campaigns of the ACLU of Missouri, told the crowd.

The PAC behind Amendment 3, called Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, raised more than $31 million this election, funding TV ads and other messaging across the state. Abortion opponents raised just a fraction of that amount, but had the support of many of Missouri’s top elected officials in spreading the word to “vote no on Amendment 3.”

“Our work to protect the safety of women and the dignity of life continues,” Stephanie Bell, with Missouri Stands with Women, said in a statement Tuesday, adding: “We will continue to fight and ultimately be victorious against the forces who see no value in life.”

When the amendment goes into effect in 30 days, abortion will become legal up until the point of fetal viability — generally seen as the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb on its own, or around 24 weeks, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

The amendment also protects access to other reproductive health care, like birth control.

Missourians have long lived with limited — or non-existent — abortion access.

This is in part because of the state’s long history electing anti-abortion lawmakers who over the last several years crafted some of the more restrictive laws in the country, known as TRAP laws, or “targeted regulation of abortion providers.”

The legislature in 2019 also passed a “trigger law,” meant to go into effect if Roe v. Wade fell. When the constitutional right to an abortion was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2022, Missouri was the first state to make virtually all abortions illegal.

While the amendment will go into effect in early December, abortion almost certainly won’t immediately become readily accessible across the state.

 

Leaders with Missourians for Constitutional Freedom have said many of the state’s existing TRAP laws, which made access nearly impossible prior to the abortion ban, will first need to be challenged in court. They said they plan to bring forward those challenges “soon.”

And they expect a hard-fought path to regaining abortion access.

“Anti-abortion, anti-democracy politicians are going to try to stomp us out,” Mallory Schwarz, executive director with Abortion Action Missouri, told the crowd after the results were announced. “They’re going to try and fight us in court, they’re going to file new attacks in Jefferson City.”

State Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican from Arnold and a leading anti-abortion lawmaker, wrote on social media following Tuesday’s vote that she would “do everything in my power” to ensure Missourians have another chance to vote on abortion.

In response to Coleman’s post, Schafer said the ACLU of Missouri expects Missouri’s abortion-rights senators to “filibuster til the cows and the chickens come home.”

Last session, Missouri Senate Democrats used the filibuster to kill an attempt by Republican lawmakers to increase the threshold required to pass a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment that would’ve made it much more difficult to pass the abortion-rights amendment.

In Missouri, constitutional amendments require a simple majority to pass. In Florida on Tuesday, an abortion-rights amendment received a majority of votes but failed to meet the required 60% approval to pass.

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom formally kicked off a citizen-led initiative petition process to get abortion on the ballot in January.

 

The coalition, whose leaders include the ACLU of Missouri, Abortion Action Missouri and the state’s Planned Parenthood affiliates, emphasized the state’s strict abortion laws in the months leading up to the election.

A decade ago, more than 5,000 abortions were performed in Missouri, according to data from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. By 2020, that number dropped to 167 due to a series of “targeted regulation of abortion providers” laws enacted by the legislature, including a mandatory 72-hour waiting period between the initial appointment and a surgical abortion and mandatory pelvic exams for medication abortions.

Between June 24, 2022 and July 31, 2024, 74 abortions were performed in Missouri under the state’s emergency exemption, according to health department data.

The abortion-rights campaign saw overwhelming support across the state early on, turning in more than 380,000 signatures to the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office in May.

Those opposed to the amendment launched a mostly grassroots effort to fight the amendment with the help of anti-abortion lawmakers, churches and activists. Their messaging leaned heavily into claims that the amendment would legalize gender-affirming surgeries for minors, something legal experts have disputed.

Several different PACs created to encourage Missourians to “vote no” cumulatively raised a few million dollars to fight the amendment, including through radio ad buys, billboards and fliers, mostly relying on word-of-mouth to raise concerns with the amendment.

Susan Prinster, 72, a member of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish in O’Fallon, gathered with a few dozen other parishioners to pray the rosary on Tuesday afternoon, hours before polls closed across the state.

“I’m very scared,” Prinster said following the recitation of the rosary late Tuesday afternoon in St. Charles County as part of a larger effort across the Archdiocese of St. Louis to pray for the defeat of Amendment 3. “I don’t know where this thing came from.”

Prinster remembers the moment 52 years ago when she learned Roe v. Wade, a U.S. Supreme Court decision that protected the constitutional right to an abortion, was decided. She was holding her first child, still an infant, in her arms at her home in Missouri.



“It was awful,” she said, recalling how she looked down at her child as they swayed in a rocking chair.

Sylvia Kiphart, a retired preschool teacher who now serves as coordinator for Assumption’s “Pro-Life” program, said if Amendment 3 passes she hopes a new ballot measure is quickly introduced attempting to overturn it.



“We’ve got to stop them,” she said. “We’ve got to. We can’t keep killing babies.”