Republicans in Missouri experienced a major setback on Tuesday when the state Supreme Court ruled against their efforts to block a ballot measure asking voters to restore abortion rights in the state.
The proposal to enshrine abortion rights into Missouri’s state constitution will now be on voters’ ballots in two months, and would undo a near-total abortion ban passed by the state’s conservatives in 2022 if voters approve it.
A lawyer for state Republicans and anti-abortion activists, Mary Catherine Martin, tried to claim during Tuesday’s arguments that the abortion ballot initiative “misled voters” by not listing all the laws that it would repeal. A lawyer supporting abortion rights said that the conservatives’ lawsuit was an “attempt to derail democracy.”
The court’s ruling follows Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s decertification of the ballot measure, removing it from state ballots after a lower court ruled against it on Friday. It’s no surprise that Republicans sought to prevent voters from considering the measure, as pro-abortion ballot initiatives nationwide have been successful since the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Even in red states like Ohio, voters enshrined abortion access into law in 2023, and the year before, five states with abortion on the ballot voted to protect reproductive rights. Two of those states, Kentucky and Montana, explicitly rejected anti-abortion measures.
Missouri is one of ten states to have abortion rights on the ballot this November. In Florida, Republicans are sending law enforcement officers around the state to investigate the verified signatures that put an abortion constitutional amendment on the ballot, an effort drawing criticism for coming across as intimidation. Republicans in Florida and Missouri seem to not care too much about democracy, or the will of voters, if it goes against conservative ideology.
