Five months after Missouri voters legalized abortion by enshrining reproductive freedom in the state constitution, Republican lawmakers say they’ve devised a strategy to overturn the historic decision.
They’ll try to force another one.
After weeks of behind-the-scenes wrangling and disagreements over which legislation to pursue, a House committee on Wednesday advanced Amendment 3, which Republicans say is their best chance of overhauling the recently approved abortion rights amendment.
The proposed constitutional amendment would effectively prohibit almost all abortions, with only a few exceptions for medical emergencies, fetal anomalies, and rape or incest before 12-weeks gestation.
The renewed energy among Republicans comes at a critical time for both abortion supporters and opponents in Missouri. Both are preparing for what is expected to be Republican lawmakers’ first major retaliatory response since 51.6% of voters overturned the state’s near-total abortion ban last November.
“The Republican majority is a pro-life majority,” stated House Majority Leader Alex Riley, a Springfield Republican. “We wanted to work together with our House colleagues, with our Senate colleagues, to come up with another question to put in front of the voters.”
However, abortion rights advocates will strongly oppose the measure. It’s far from certain that Republicans will be able to successfully ban abortions again.
Despite little notice from lawmakers, more than 70 people gathered at the Missouri Capitol on Wednesday to protest the legislation. After the committee limited public comments and kicked supporters out of the hearing room, people gave roughly two hours of fiery testimony in the Capitol Rotunda.
“We’re going to keep talking,” Jaeda Roth, a 20-year-old Kansas City resident, told The Star from the Capitol. “It doesn’t matter if they don’t listen to us because we’re going to make it known who shut down our voices.”
The proposal still needs to be approved by the full House and Senate, at a time when abortion opponents disagree on how far they want to go to restrict access. If the measure passes both chambers, it will appear on the ballot in November 2026, or in an earlier election called by Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe.
The effort is a continuation of Republican attempts to limit direct democracy in Missouri, where voters have used the ballot box to pass progressive policies such as raising the minimum wage, expanding Medicaid, and legalizing marijuana.
“They’re elected by Missourians to go and represent the people’s interests,” explained Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains. “And still, they blatantly refuse to implement or follow what the people have asked for.”
Following Wednesday’s hearing, House Minority Leader Ashley Aune, a Kansas City Democrat, told reporters that the decision to exclude people who traveled to testify against the legislation was “unprecedented, unwarranted, and, frankly, undemocratic.”
“I’ve never seen anything like that in my time here,” Aune told me.
The committee approved the legislation without making a copy available online for the public to view. The full version of the bill was made available online the next day.
Proposed GOP abortion ban
The explosive hearing this week was months in the works. Abortion opponents repeatedly stated in the months preceding and following the November election that they would seek another competing ballot measure in the future.
However, Republicans have been divided on strategy. Some proposed legislation would reinstate a complete ban, with no exceptions for rape or incest. Others seek to make more modest gestures toward abortion access. The priorities have shifted by the day, perplexing even the most savvy politicians in the state Capitol.
In an interview with The Star, Kehoe, who highlighted his staunch opposition to abortion in his campaign for governor, did not specify which version he would support, saying only that he would vote in favor of a measure “designed to protect innocent life.”
“Hopefully we can get something through that’s reasonable that Missourians would support, and they’ll put it on the ballot,” he told the crowd.
Both abortion rights supporters and opponents told The Star this week that legislation, which will be carried by Branson Republican Rep. Brian Seitz, will most likely be used to try to ban the procedure.
“We put a lot of emphasis on protecting women,” Seitz told The Star. “It also allows for rape and incest if the woman decides to do so within 12 weeks. And I believe that is what the majority of voters intended when they voted for Amendment 3.
Seitz repeatedly deflected questions about when his proposed amendment would prohibit abortion, saying, “We’re going to get this before the people.” Both Seitz and Riley rejected framing the legislation as a “abortion ban,” claiming that it would allow for exceptions.
The proposal, if approved by both chambers, would ask Missourians to repeal Amendment 3, which legalized abortion in the state. The legislation would permit abortions in medical emergencies and cases of fetal anomalies, such as birth defects. It would also permit the procedure in extremely rare cases of rape or incest occurring within 12 weeks of gestation.
While the language of the amendment is silent on when abortion would be prohibited, it completely invalidates the language of Amendment 3. As a result, it is unclear whether the amendment is intended to reinstate the state’s previous abortion ban or to give lawmakers the authority to enact legislation restricting access.
In addition to the abortion ban, the constitutional amendment would prohibit gender-affirming care for transgender people under the age of 18. These procedures, which include hormone therapy, are already prohibited by state law but became a rallying cry for abortion opponents who falsely claimed that Amendment 3 opened the door to legalizing them.
While the measure’s wording is subject to change, abortion supporters have sharply criticized the proposed ballot language, which lawmakers want voters to see.
The question makes no mention of an abortion ban, instead stating that it would ensure “access to care for medical emergencies, ectopic pregnancies, and miscarriages,” among other things. The language also claims to “ensure women’s safety during abortions.”
“The proposed ballot summary is incredibly deceptive,” said Maggie Olivia, policy director of Abortion Action Missouri, an abortion rights advocacy organization. “Because the politicians behind these bans know that if they tell the truth about their goal to ban abortion, that they won’t have the support.”
Status of abortion access
Roth, who traveled to Jefferson City from Kansas City before being barred from Wednesday’s hearing, said it’s a dangerous time to be a woman in Missouri.
She offered to help collect signatures to get Amendment 3 on the November ballot and make a difference in her community. Lawmakers, she claims, are wasting time attempting to overturn what their constituents have just approved.
“They don’t want to listen,” she explained. “We voted on it and made a decision.” And they are going against their own constituents’ decision. So it’s essentially a slap in the face of democracy.
The vote to legalize abortion in conservative Missouri was historic, delivering a sharp rebuke to Republican lawmakers who had spent decades restricting access. The constitutional amendment repealed a near-total ban imposed in 2022 after the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
In the aftermath of the vote, opponents have consistently claimed that Missourians did not understand what they were voting on when they approved the measure. They claimed that Amendment 3 would lead to unrestricted and unregulated abortions.
However, months after the vote, abortion providers are still fighting state officials in court to restore full access. In February, the Planned Parenthood affiliate in Kansas City performed the state’s first elective abortion since the vote. It was also the first abortion at the Kansas City clinic since 2018.
While Planned Parenthood clinics in Kansas City, Columbia, and St. Louis provide procedural abortions, medication abortions are still unavailable.
For Wales and Planned Parenthood, the opposing efforts by state officials and lawmakers to block restored abortion access in the courts and legislature have caused confusion among Missourians.
Missourians are currently unaware of the available care, according to her.
“They don’t realize that procedural care has been restored in three different cities in the state,” she told me. “And they definitely don’t understand why an issue that they thought was resolved last fall is already up for debate once again, because the legislature is not willing to listen to the people.”
