It’s bad enough that less than six months after Missouri voters amended their state constitution to enshrine reproductive rights, the Legislature is now barreling toward creating a do-over referendum that would attempt to roll back those rights. As usual, our state’s politicians are shameless about trashing the expressed will of the public when it doesn’t go the way they want.
And now we see that it’s actually worse than that.
The final version of the new measure — which only needs a Senate vote to put the question back on the ballot — offers some of the most cynical and deliberately misleading ballot language that voters will ever see.
How misleading is it? For any voters who aren’t already well-versed in the political debate over this issue in Jefferson City, the ballot language sought by the Legislature’s ruling Republican supermajority will look like it expands abortion rights, when in fact it does exactly the opposite.
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Missourians approved Amendment 3 last November, overturning the draconian, almost total abortion ban the Legislature had imposed in 2022 with the fall of Roe v. Wade. Amendment 3 guaranteed access to abortion services prior to fetal viability, the same standard that had stood for half a century under Roe.
The measure now nearing passage in Jefferson City would seek to overturn that amendment with a new one to once again outlaw abortion in Missouri.
Not that you’d know that from reading the proposed ballot language, though.
Here’s the question lawmakers want to put before the voters, from the text of the :
Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to:
— Guarantee access to care for medical emergencies, ectopic pregnancies, and miscarriages;
— Ensure women’s safety during abortions;
— Ensure parental consent for minors;
— Allow abortions for medical emergencies, fetal anomalies, rape, and incest;
— Require physicians to provide medically accurate information; and
— Protect children from gender transition?
What’s missing from this ballot question? A single, solitary mention of the fact that, if voters approve it, they will be outlawing most abortions in Missouri that are legal today.
Without that context, the reference to “medical emergencies,†“fetal anomalies,†“rape and incest†and the rest make it sound like abortion isn’t currently legal in those instances (it is) and that this measure would add in those protections.
In truth, these are merely the narrow exceptions that the measure would offer to women seeking abortions, while outlawing them in all other cases. Which, again, goes unmentioned in the ballot language.
And the crass dishonesty here goes way beyond that omission. In fact, there’s not a single element listed here that isn’t already law in Missouri. Parental consent, prohibitions on minor gender transition and medical standards are already in place. Their inclusion here is nothing but “ballot candy†— popular issues designed to distract and confuse voters.
Here’s a serious question that voters should be asking of the legislators who created this sleight-of-hand trickery: Why are they hesitant to offer ballot language that specifies what the proposed amendment would, you know, actually do?
We’ll even offer that language: Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to outlaw all abortion services except in cases of medical emergencies, fetal anomalies, and rape or incest for up to 12 weeks?
Not one other word is necessary to outline what this proposal seeks to accomplish. It’s fair to ask why they aren’t just saying that.
Individual state legislators’ contact information is available at hous sena
