Missourians Will Likely Overturn the State's Abortion Ban in November

Democrats ran out the clock to beat the GOP on "Initiative Petition Reform."

Missouri was the first state to ban abortion after Roe fell. We are on our way to overturning that ban.

I can’t believe I just wrote those words…

Missouri currently has one of the most egregious and cruel bans in the country. We have an 8-week ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. There were only 170 abortions obtained in the entire state in 2020, the year after the initial ban passed. There is estimated to have been around 6,000 pregnancies in Missouri due to rape since Roe fell, though. A disturbing trend is becoming clear, state-mandated pregnancies are happening, but there is good news to share.

Friday, May 17th, was the last day of the 2024 legislative session, and the Missouri Democratic minority blocked the #1 priority of the GOP supermajority, Initiative Petition Reform.

The GOP planned to strip us of one person, one vote this session. They planned to “reform” the Initiative Petition process and dispossess our votes and dilute our voices. The GOP needed to pass reform to keep abortion from winning on the November ballot.

The initiative petition, or IP, process allows citizens to collect signatures to place a new statute or constitutional amendment on the ballot to be voted on by constituents.

In Missouri, we have used the IP process to beat back Right to Work, to allow for medical and recreational marijuana, and to expand Medicaid. We have been very effective in voting in progressive policies through the IP process, which is exactly why the GOP wanted to change the rules — they know abortion is almost certain to pass if it makes it onto the November ballot.

Currently, to put an amendment into the Constitution, we need 50% of the votes plus one. A simple majority. The Missouri GOP tried to reform the process by suggesting that to win, an amendment would need a majority of votes in a majority of House district, thereby diluting the votes in the city and deferring to the votes in the more conservative rural parts of the state.

The Democratic minority stood up to the bullies in the GOP and won. Democratic Senators filibustered for about 50 hours on the last few days of the session. They were very loud about what the GOP was planning to do — they effectively posted about the filibuster and the proposed trickery on social media. The Dems told their constituents about how the GOP planned to trick voters into giving away their votes. The Democrats never stopped pushing back. This is a victory for every Missourian. But, it is also a message to every GOP-dominated state in the union. A legislative minority can beat a supermajority.

The abortion petition:

We needed about 180,000 signatures to place the abortion initiative on the ballot in November. After repeated attacks from the Secretary of State, Jay Ashcroft, delaying the ballot language, we were left with only about 90 days to gather signatures.

Across the state, we gathered 380,000 signatures. 200K more than needed. Let me repeat that…TWO HUNRDED THOUSAND more signatures than we needed.

It looks like we will have the signatures to put abortion on the ballot. There will be a massive effort by the GOP to decertify thousands of signatures, but with 200K more than what we needed, this will be difficult, if not impossible.

Will the abortion amendment pass when it makes it to the ballot?

There is an interesting Twitter thread on the chances of Missouri passing an amendment to enshrine abortion rights based off the similarities of Missouri and Ohio. Ohio passed an amendment declaring an individual's right to “make and carry out one's own reproductive decisions” in 2023. Ohio also has a GOP trifecta who tried to reform their IP process as well. They lost.

Here are a few highlights from the Twitter thread by Missouri Mapper:

In November 2023, Ohio voted by a 13.56% margin to codify access to abortion into their state constitution. Missouri will likely have a similar measure on the ballot this November. I will speculate if the Ohio measure may predict how the Missouri vote will go.

Politically, Missouri and Ohio are reasonably similar as well, both are former bellwethers that have moved strongly to the right in the age of Trump, and both are governed by Republican trifectas that have somewhat recently enacted wide-reaching abortion bans.

In addition to demographic similarities, Ohio like Missouri, has recently voted on a Marijuana legalization measure, and both states elected Senators in 2022 (the first post-Dobbs election), where both Republicans, while prevailing, slightly ran behind Trump.

Missouri is electorally more conservative than Ohio. Even still, I think that if one wants to make an election model to predict how Missouri would vote in an Abortion referendum in November, Ohio is probably the best reference point to start from for several reasons.

Using Ohio's 2023 Abortion referendum as a reference point, Missouri's demographics and past election results suggest that the proposed abortion measure will pass by 6.0% this November if it makes the ballot.

That well-researched thread made my day!

The GOP Initiative Petition Reform agenda is dead, and that means a lot for this reason: IP reform was the #1 priority for the Missouri GOP, and they had to give up and walk away from it. They can’t trick voters on this amendment.

What does that mean exactly? Without deceit, voters can decide what is in their best interest. And, this means we have hope. A lot of hope.

I am very hopeful that the abortion rights question will be on the ballot in November. After talking to so many people on the ground, I am hopeful that Missourians will vote to overturn our ban, and women and girls will have the right to make decisions about their own bodies again.

I am hopeful that this is just the beginning of taking our state back…little by little, I see regular folks saying they are fed up with the GOP supermajority. That they have overstepped. That they’ve flown to close to the sun. That they are drunk with power.

I see a light at the end of the tunnel. I think it’s sunlight.

Onward, friends.

~Jess