Missouri abortion rights groups see path to overturn ban after Ohio results

A major victory for abortion rights in Republican-controlled Ohio has energized abortion rights supporters in Missouri, providing hope that Missourians would approve a measure overturning the state’s ban if it reaches the ballot.

Missouri abortion rights groups and Democrats immediately saw in Tuesday’s Ohio vote a potential pathway to enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution, possibly making Missouri the first state in the nation to overturn a near-total statewide ban after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

“Ohio sent a really loud, clear message and we know the same is true for Missouri and it has been for a long time,” said Emily Wales, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes.

Ohio voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a measure that protects the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution in a 56.6% to 43.4% vote. Abortion rights supporters on Tuesday also scored victories in Virginia, where Democrats secured control of the state legislature, and Kentucky, where Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear won reelection.

Abortion rights supporters in Republican-controlled Missouri, where anti-abortion activists and officials have for years worked to limit access to the procedure, have filed a slew of proposed constitutional amendments that would restore the right to an abortion. Supporters hoping to get a version of the measure on the 2024 ballot quickly pointed to Tuesday’s vote.

But a Missouri vote on abortion isn’t a certainty. Republicans and opponents of the measure, some who acknowledge that Missouri voters would likely approve an abortion rights measure, have erected legal roadblocks that have delayed supporters from collecting signatures.

While delaying the process, the legal battles — which center on challenges to how the measures would be phrased on the ballot and how much legalizing abortion would cost the state — also offer a rare preview of the campaign arguments voters will likely see from abortion opponents in the coming months.

Those arguments, which paint the proposals as a major sea change in state law and describe legalized abortion as dangerous and expensive to the state, will likely be front and center in the push from abortion opponents and Republican statewide officials.

Part of that push comes from three anti-abortion opponents — state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, an Arnold Republican, state Rep. Hannah Kelly, a Mountain Grove Republican and Kathy Forck, an anti-abortion activist from New Bloomfield. The trio have claimed that the ballot measures would cost the state billions, a figure that originated from anti-abortion groups and has been called inaccurate by Republican state Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick.

“While we are disappointed in the results of the Ohio elections, Missouri is not Ohio,” the group said in a joint statement to The Star on Wednesday. “We will continue to fight to ensure every Missouri voter understands the human cost and the fiscal cost of the radical Left’s extreme abortion-on-demand politics.”

Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a staunch abortion opponent who is running for governor in 2024, has pushed for what a panel of judges called overtly partisan language to appear on the ballot. Ashcroft, who is in charge of writing the ballot summaries, wrote that they would “allow for dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions.”

Ashcroft defended his summaries at a press conference in Kansas City last week, echoing a familiar refrain among some Republicans who argue that the language that appears on the ballot could have a significant sway in the results of a potential vote.

“I think it shows that they’re scared,” Ashcroft said, referring to the legal challenge from the ACLU of Missouri against his ballot summaries, “because they know if the people of this state understand what they’re voting on, the people of this state will reject it and they’re afraid that they’ll lose money off the lives of the kids that they want to kill.”

But that kind of messaging, abortion rights supporters say, did not work in Ohio, where a flurry of misinformation and complicated language around what the measure would do, had some worried about whether they could rally enough support in a conservative-led state.

Wales, with Planned Parenthood, pointed to Tuesday’s Ohio vote and a vote in Kansas last year where an anti-abortion proposal was defeated. Both campaigns faced misinformation, she said.

Missourians, she said, are “just as smart if not smarter than Ohioans.”

“There were 11th hour attacks to try to confuse voters in those states and in every state where this is on the ballot, and time and time again, voters have understood what’s really happening,” she said. “They’ve been able to see through all of the distraction to vote to protect and expand abortion access.”

The large number of low propensity voters in Ohio who came out in force to vote in favor of the amendment is also something that Missourians can learn from Tuesday’s vote, Wales said.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday signaled that voters made it clear that they don’t want government interfering with their health care.

“I think that if you look at from the midterms to last night, from California to Kansas, Ohio to Virginia, the voters said, look, the government should not be telling women what to do with their bodies,” she said. “I think voters have been clear, regardless of whether they’re in a so-called red or blue state that one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling women what to do with their bodies.”

While the affirmative vote in Ohio appears to have solidified supporters’ arguments that a majority of voters would support some form of abortion access in Missouri if it were to reach the ballot, some remain cautious about whether the measure will be placed in front of voters.

Peverill Squire, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, said that the court cases involving the Missouri petitions illustrate the fear from abortion opponents that if the measure does reach the ballot, it would likely pass. The big question, he said, is whether Republicans are successful in running out the clock.

In terms of the dueling campaigns, Squire said, abortion opponents will try to characterize the measures as extreme while abortion rights supporters will likely paint them as returning things to the way they were before the Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade.

Mallory Schwarz, the executive director of Abortion Action Missouri, in a statement celebrating Tuesday’s vote, criticized Republican officials, including Ashcroft and Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey, for keeping “Missourians’ abortion access petitions in legal limbo in order to run out the clock.”

“If a Missouri campaign moves forward despite these constant attacks on our democracy, we have one message for Jay Ashcroft: We’ll see you at the ballot box,” she said.

Abortion opponents, for their part, have tried to illustrate the differences between the Ohio vote and a potential vote in Missouri.

Samuel Lee, a longtime anti-abortion lobbyist in Missouri, in a statement pointed to the fact that abortion rights supporters have not yet galvanized behind one particular version of the ballot measure and they have yet to collect signatures. That could hurt fundraising efforts, he said.

“We are greatly saddened by the passage of an abortion amendment to the Ohio Constitution,” he said. “But Missouri is not Ohio, and Missouri is not like any other state where abortion might be on the ballot in 2024.”

Separately on Wednesday, the Missouri Supreme Court heard arguments over whether the state legislature’s move to bar Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid reimbursements violates the state constitution. The high court did not immediately rule on the case.

Still, despite the consistent push against abortion and providers by state officials, abortion rights supporters remain hopeful that Tuesday’s vote in Ohio — and other Republican-led states — is a path forward for Missouri.

“When given the opportunity to vote, Midwesterners have overwhelmingly rejected governmental interference in their reproductive rights,” the ACLU of Missouri said on social media Tuesday night. “Missourians will do the same.”

The Star’s Daniel Desrochers contributed to this story.